im back

if theres anyone out there(im guessing not) i have returned for another review, if i may explain my absense i must say this: i dont like my blog. its mostly negative reveiws of movies you knew where going to suck in the first place. the reaso for this is because its so much easier to bash a movie than praise it and i refuse to waste time with plot synopsis'(we see a million trailers a day who cares). sadely this reveiw does not break the mold it is yet again a movie in the 2 star range you will eventually, the difference? the critics said it was good, i thought it would be good, and you probably did too, so without further ado i bring you my reveiw of


THE orphanage
2/5 stars
directed by guillmero del toro

downer
talk about dissapointment after seeing del toro swap styles flawlessly from fairtale(pan's labrynth) to big budget hollywood action(hellboy) to horror/coming of age story(devil's backbone, i believed he could do no wrong but whenever you believe that your in for a shocker of the worst kind and here you go. but before we deconstruct the orphanage lets look back at one of the earlier films: devil's backbone. devil's backbone was successful and so haunting because it does things completly opposite of most horror movies. it treates the story with importance, love and care, instead of relying on endless jump scares., and shies away from ghost designs and story elements, instead creating a truly otherworldly and odd creature. unfortunatly del toro is all to interested in jumping to reinvent the succeuss without remembering what was so important in the first place. here del toro is coasting relying obnoxiously on jump scares you can see coming for another country, girl going into dark closet with an open door, what will happen? i bet you know. the plot too is wholely predictable, the main character took 9 months to figure out the game she played with her son before disapearance had something to do with his disapearance it took me five seconds. and when its not slap in the face obvious its wholly unexplained and filled with plot holes, early on a girl is attackedby a ghost holding a key and later a trespasser appears with the same key , but the too are unconected, what? and the ending is before one of the most unesccasarily melodramatically depressing. the character is a loving caring woman and she does not deserve such pain and suffering that has is counter to everything the movie has tried to tell you. it if that werent bad enough del toro tries to reverse the fact with a series of out of place scenes set to made for tv movies sap factor that just seals the nail in the orphanages coffin. which is a shame because this didnt have to en id eulogy, there are ovious strokes of brilliant minimalizism, the sound of creaking and breaking, near the beginning are classic ghost movie scares, and the sudden appearance of the credits actually had me jumping, but unfortunatly we take today to bury the orphanage and hope we will not have to bury famed director del toro too.

short reveiws(long vacation, long plane ride, alone in hotel room)
Jumper .5/5 stars
boring, cliche, poorly acted, and has an ending so sick someone might wonder if it was black comedy. remember when hayden christenson said he was giving up acting forever, god if only.

the savages(unfinished, first impressions):
i only got about halfway through but if you like tearjerjers clumsily disguised as...something else heres a movie for you.

forgetting sarah marshal 4/5 stars:
sometimes in modern comedies it actually feels good to, you know, laugh. and boy will this make you laugh, the usual problems apatow has with editing and overlongness apply here but honestly i doubt you'll care.

baby mama 2.5/5 stars:
starts hilariously gets into 2 twists, one:instinatly predictable, two:wholly random and diversive, both unessasary and harmful to plot flow. look for thewho plays white trace girl and her husband(the only constant wave of comedy in the movie) who previously stared in idiocracy( i think).

nightmare man 3/5 stars: people who were teens in the 80's will no doubt feel like they are watching this movie in a grindhouse from their car, everyone else will just enjoy the self consiously campy fun(ignore the porno production values in scene 1, the cinematography improves).

the ruins 1/5 stars: the trailer lies, the movie is about evil killer plants, no seriously. feed me seymour. fuck this movie.

shutter .5/5 stars:the only complement i can give this movie? the ghost is hot. yeah thats right that ghost is hot.

frontiers 2.5/5 stars: a brilliant start and a group of well drawn characters, not bad for a horror movie. unfortunatly the movies delves into laughable neo nazi exploatation, character cliche's, lenght issues, and blatant texas chainsaw massacre plagarism. there is an amazingly thrilling conclusion though, finally revenge in the spirit of the 80's.

darjeeling limited 4.5/5 stars: a wandering bit of dramadey brought to by the master wes anderson,come expecting and your expectations will be exceeded.

futurama:the beast with a billion backs! 2.5/5 stars:instead of making a good case for the insane futuramadvds this proves an episode would be better, after 45 minutes of hitand miss mania it finally settles down and becomes good for, shocker, 30 minutes! unfortunatly it also commts a cardinal sin and leaves all the characters in no man's land destroying everything pre established,not good.

more latter....

HorrorFest 2007

3.5/5 stars
tooth and nail

Michael madsen
break your bones, mr jones
mark young seems to be like one of those nerdy kids who got a's in everything but somehow flunked out of P.E. hes obviously mastered casting, writing, directing, and camera, but he was never able to climb the rope of pacing, something even those jock retards who made skeleton key could ascend. tooth and nail may be the only movie in history i wished to be longer, why because it could have been the aliens of the indie movie industry, come on it had the girls in charge bit, the tension, and the mute girl. but instead i has to just be a really good movie. right off the bat the movie has a hypnotic feel, it lulls you into a world much like your own, only devoid of fossil fuels. the fact that this minor resource's cease to exist desecrated humanity is certainly laughable at first, but the more the professor explains it the more you could see such a minor thing tear up the materialistic USA. after the thesis, the movie plays out like aliens for the metal generation, a gaggle of cannibals in GWAR inspired costumes stalks and prays on survivors in a hospital that looks suspiciously like that of session 9(its no problem though, throughout session i prayed someone would steal the set and atmosphere and put it in a movie that didn't drag ass for 2 hours and give me no payoff). all in all tooth and nail will keep you captivated and entertained even during its ridiculous anti-climax and keep you thinking even after you leave the theater.


2.5/5 stars
Mulberry street
where the streets have names
forget the unnamed virus carried by the manhatten rats this movies has 2 other distinct diseases. first is the only, other then the mislead last 5 minutes, problem with the movie: zombie movie denial syndrome. before i explain this let me tell you the characteristics of the movies enemies: brain dead, eating human flesh, dead already, infected when bitten. sound like zombies, well not quite, they are...giant...evolving......rat people. What? i know this movie was shot on a budget of almost nothing(shot on a handicam in the middle of new york without permission, none of the actors received pay because they were all friends of the director)but zombie make up is cheap and easy to find, and with the film's seizure inducing camera angles nobody will be able to tell the difference. but rat people, cornballs up the scenes that are supposed to be scary and almost ruins a great movie. the secondary case of george romero-itis is actually beneficial to the film as it makes an interesting parallel to the new orleans tragedy. honestly their really isn't a whole lot more wrong with mulberry street that isn't the rat people, the actors are the most talented bunch of nobodies i think i've ever seen, the story is good, the gore is low budget gold, and the characters are fleshed out and actually make you care about them, and hope for their benefactor. oh but those rat people and the overly sympathetic, lets rip off 28 days later ending will keep you from ever taking the movie completly seriously and will keep your friends from taking it seriously when you bring it up. mulberry street is a prime example of something that was fixed when it wasnt broken, and now looks worse for wear than it's predecessor.

The Beach

2.5/5 stars
lionardo dicaprio


identity crisis
the beach is a great movie with an interesting idea that dosent always know how to express it or even if it wants to. it starts out reasonably, with an almost fight club like vib with a deep voiced loner walking around bangkok rebelling against the world. this dosent go on for long as richard(dicaprio) recruits a french couple to follow him to a private island with a great beach and lots of weed. once we get to the island(and it dosent take long) we are quickly introduced to a paradise, a self sufficient community that seems to be the place hippies always describe in their long speeches. although this paradise has a price, a price of denial and at times blood, the film introduces this theme early and brilliantly by placing obscene acts in bright sunny locales. unfortunatly halfway through the movies forgets whats its trying to convey and goes off into a long pointless "lord of the flies" like deviation. at this point the movie throws so much at us(including a donkey kong like video game trip, and multiple refrences to apocaLYPSE NOW)thats its imposssible to figure out what exactly's happening. of course the movie transistions back to a dark ending but is done sloppily so and will have many bewildered. but even if the movie hadnt had a mid life crisis im not sure it would have completely worked, mainly because the film dosent want to admit that decaprio's character is an asshole. the implications are there(hes unfaithful, a liar, and spoiled) but because of decaprio's star power we have to see him as merely misunderstood, instead of a more flawed and believable human character. ultimatly the recipe here is add one great movie, mix with one pretentious movie, and another great movie that had nothing to do with the original recipe and voila instant mediocracy.

Hide and seek

2/5 stars
robert deniro, dakota fanning

ok i give u where's the good ending hiding
starting up this film you would expect a typical new horror treatment, cheap scares, awkward dialouge and an ending that makes everything in the movie nonsensical. you'd be right except for one key element, dakota fanning. dont get me wrong her character's as poorly drawn as the res, but her emily comes across spooky because dakota takes her character and runs with it. dark stares, wide eyes, alternatly distant and happy voices, hell she'd be creepy even if she wasnt messing around with her homocidal friend "charley". dakota's exceptional talents carries the movie through long stretches of bad dialouge and weirdness(sample dialouge peice,"your lucky to have such a beautiful daughter." what)although the movie does conjure up a few good ideas(dakota dressing up in her mother's dress for dinner). unfortunatly the movie tears itself appart in the end, forcing robert deniro to play himself of as a killer something he's not equiped to do.(need a laugh? watch Deniro try to be chilling singing nursery rhymes with a knife in his hand. it dosent really matter,bad horror movies have a way of burrying themselves never to be seen again. for instance, can anyone tell me what the missing was about? i thought not.

Spider man 3

1.5/5 stars
Kirsten dunst, tobey maquire

threes bad company
if the fray showed us how to save a life, then this movie showed us how to take it away, by having all the actors forget to act, have the plot make no sense and to completly remove all the human edge from the entire movie. the latter started with the removal of realistic dialouge replaced by archaic awkward dialouge and out of place "lets get this movie over with" reavealing lines(if only the whole movie had come as quickly as harry osborne's character realization). then add a whiny emo version of peter parker, and kirsten dunst's "im here for the pay check" acting(dont feel bad kirsten the majority of the cast also attended the ben affleck acting academy in their off time). oh and then the plot, the only thing with bigger hole's then the building trhat got hit with a crane in SP3. sam raimi throws in 2 romantic interests, a case of amnesia, 3 villians, unexplained alien adrenaline, and a bunch of characters with no purpose or point other than to make the audience groan and check their watches? confused? you wont be for long as watching the flick will have you bawling with laughter. a guy who wgoes to church and prays to the scrucifix to kill peter parker? a villian who says all he has left is his daughter who will die in 2 days? come on thats funnier than anything achton kutcher ever did. good points? sp3 has a couple, aunt may is still the voice of reason and the only well written character, jk simmons still delivers the laughs as daily bugle editor, and the final fight is a marvel to behold. up and commer bryce dallace howard and raimi vet bruce cambell pop up for an unsatisfying minute or two trying to salvage some feeling but the directors would rather futz around with dated cgi than write a story, to bad this summer is hard up for action but its bone dry of intriging tales, the wait continues

FearDotcom

1/5 stars
Stephen dorff
now with 100 percent less fear
Feardotcom is a movie with no thesis, no explanation, no logic, and no point. it odsent even seem like a legitimate movie, just a showcase of all nu-horror's problems with non of their redeming qualities. its got the ring's hocky moments(not to mention most of its ideas and story in bootleg quality) but non of the creative quirky characters or dark suburban feel. its got pulses long bouts of people being murdered in the exact same way, but without explanation or idea. and its got the 50's horror movie obligitory lighting during supposed sary moments without anything that even comes close to a coherent script. what i does have is a movie set in an alternate universe, where bodies unfound for 5 years are discovered in 2 minutes, mothers of hemerpheliac babies let them play in old abandoned steel mills, and vengeful ghosts kill off everyone that might have been able to avenge the(maybe this movie is set in the same place as Idiocracy it would explain a lot.)i have kindly rewarded this slock with a single star becuase certain flashback scenes evoke(and yes by evoke i might plagarise shamelessly)images from the superior slient hill, and becuase a delted scene involving a mushroom factory is an acid tripping good time(without the expensive cost of acid or mental institution visit) but if your looking for a technoligical thriller of quality go watch the original japanese pulse

Breakfast on pluto

1.5/5 stars
cillian murphy
I'll just have water, thanks
recently i read a roger ebert review sitting that waterboy(a much better movie than this)had bthe most anooying voice he had ever heard and some how slapped on 4.5 star rating on Pluto, obviously he didnt watch either of the movies in question. it almost seems like cillian murphy is trying to make patrick unlikable, as his accent is a grating mix of 50's so sweet it cant be real and incomphrehesible whispers(an early seen where patrick trails off into profanity with the voice of a 6 year old is the character's only inspiring moment), not many of the other voices fair better, as mumbles and accents distort any chance you have of comprehending the story, hell even character you wanna like(an irate fat man who lives in the trainstation and attacks kids at a children's fantasy park)are never more than a disposable novelty. a couple(possibly unintentional) laughs at bizaree faces and fantasies provide a decent diversion but why slog through an awful maincourse for a mediocre side dish?