I know it's been quite awhile since my last update, but I've been too tired to get around to it since the last post. And, because of my procrastination I have quite a few films to cover this time, as I had a very film filled Labor Day Weekend. I must appologize in advance that I'm not going to be getting to
Hollywoodland today, but I going to update it again soon; I'm just too tired after writing all these.
Below you'll find that I enjoy
Crank, visited an
Idiotocracy, drank at a
Beerfest, visited
Little Miss Sunshine, said hello to
Serenity, drove down
Glory Road, all of this leading up to a performance by an
Illusionist.
Go ahead, read 'em all, not like you have anything better to do.
Sit back, grab a drink, and start reading, may take ya awhile.
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"I'm Chev Chelios and today I'm going to die."
There are very few films that I'm willing to sit down in after it has already started. Granted, I doubt I missed too much as I pretty much knew the plot of the film from
Crank's trailer. But, Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) is a hit man who, after screwing up, is drugged with the "Beijing Cocktail"-- a synthetic drug used to put horses down which there is no anitdote...of course. After Chev understands that he can't stop his adrenaline flowing or he dies, he begins to hunt and kill all of his "killer's" thugs.
Dwight Yoakam plays a fun loving, caring, doctor who helps out Chelios the best he can. Amy Smart is Eve, Chev's girlfriend, who is loving and tries her best to help him survive.
The directing kept me on the edge of my seat, as any adrenaline necessary film would. This movie is not for the weak stomach or the epileptic. The scenes are very quick and full of gore. In some cases I can understand the gore, but it was occasionaly too much. But being a light hearted movie throughout, I can see how over doing the gore added to humor in some cases.
Although the film was none stop and enjoyable, I'm not sure it's for everyone. I wouldn't be expecting this film to win any awards, but I know it'll probably do well when released on DVD.
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"You're the smartest person in the world!" "Huh?"
Being a big fan of
Office Space, I was hoping that Mike Judge's
Idiotocracy would be as intelligent as Office Space was, oh so many years ago. It wasn't intelligent, but yet it was idiotocratic. Set in 2005, Army Private Luke Wilson's character is told that he has no choice but to participate in a cryogenic experiment along with a prostitute. A few months afterwards the scientist in charge is arrested for drug use and thrown in jail. That being so, the pair are left in their cryogenic containers for 1000 years and they awake to being the smartest person on the planet.
There are movies that appear on USA Network early in the morning and they aren't usually too good, well never are good. I can see Idiotocracy being on USA Network in a few months.
The directing wasn't bad, nor was the acting, but the screenwriting is... well a B-movie, subpar by any means. The plot of the movie isn't actuallyt hat bad, low IQ people having a lot of kids and the high IQ people having fewer or no kids would, unchecked, eventually lead to a world in which the smartest person has an IQ of 50. But fortunately enough, this will not occur since the
smart people will keep the dumb man down and out of any power.
But it did have funny momments. They weren't few and far between, like Talladega Nights, but they were taken to too far of an extent in some cases.
I'd watch it if I was at a party, late in the party.
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"I once saw him fart a plum... I was plum surprised."
I heard that a friend was in town, and called 'em up. Sure enough. Well, we had both heard that about this drinkingfest in Germany called
Beerfest so, we decided to go take a look at it...Yeah, right. We both knew what we were in for. The Broken Lizard comedy troupe, the same people who created
Super Troopers, brought us another gut wrenching comedy in which two brothers attempt at returning their fathers ashes to Germany result in them stumbling into a century old drinking tradition called Beerfest. After the Germans call the Americans stupid the brothers decided to get a drinking team together so that they may get revenge against the Germans.
Well the team is assembled and the drinking begins. The comedy is everlasting and ever so constant. The movie is amusing and I laughed throughout the entire film. I laughed so much my mouth hurt when the movie was over.
Other than the soundtrack being closely similar Eurotrip, and some of the accents so thick they almost sound like Russians, it was a very enjoyable film.
Summary: Funny, but must be a drinker, otherwise it wouldn't be quite as funny.
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"I'm glad you started talking again, you're not as dumb as you look"
Steve Carrell attmpts suicide!? Yeah, that's what I thought at the beginning of
Little Miss Sunshine, but he did. His character is the foremost Proust author in America and his boyfriend broke up with him, leading him to suicide. Thus begins one of the funniest movies I've seen in years... well, since Clerks 2 at least.
So we meet the family in the scene around the dinning room table; the same scene that's in the trailer. Grandpa (Alan Arkin) is a heroin addict who speaks his mind; Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a motivational speaker who uses his "9 steps to become a winner" in everyday speak and attempts to impose it upon everyone else; Sheryl (Toni Collette) is the mother of the family who's career I can't remember (
) but is very loving to her children Dwayne and Olive; Dwayne (Paul Dano) is a angst filled philosophical 15 year old who has stopped speaking due to Friedrich Nietzsche's teaching so that he may get into the Air Force Academy; Olive (Abigail Breslin) is a 7 year old who --although not very attractive, a little overweight-- only goal so early in life is to win a beauty pagent which her grandfather choreographs. At dinner the family finds out that Olive has advanced to the Regional Little Miss Sunshine Beauty Pagent as 1st place was taking diet pills. Sheryl and Richard both decide that the only way to get Olive to the pagent is load everyone up in the VW van and go from New Mexico to Redondo Beach California.
Going into the movie I had heard nothing but good things from critics and even better reviews from my parents. So, needless to say I had very high hopes for this film, and I'm very proud to say that it dashed my hopes like a Ferrari passing my Lancer. Beerfest has nothing on this movie. Considering that it was billed as a family movie almost all the humor is for the 13 and up, granted there are some very vulger lines, but memorable enough that they won't inflict too much damage onto the growing mind.
If Clerks 2 doesn't win for best Comedy at MTV's movie awards I hope that this movie does. It was absolutly hilarious from start to finish. Every character was acted perfectly with no lapse in character throughout the entire film. The casting was amazing! I can see no other actors in their positions. The directing was awesome as I didn't see any scenes that could've been much better, as I seem to do in other films. The music was great too, but not overbearing which seems to be the sense of things lately as most movies rely on the music to set the mood.
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"She understands, but she doesn't comprehend."
In attempt to keep up with my track record I'm going to use the best line from the movie as the beginning title. Well unfortunately there are too many lines from a cancelled series which then became a movie to choose from. But, the best line comes from the 10th episode of
Firefly, which was later turned into the movie
Serenity (named after the ship).
Well, there a few series that evolve into a feature film and this is the best of the few. Firefly is a completely underrated series, and I think I can say that after viewing the entire season in 3 days and having seen Serenity first I had an idea of what Firefly was going to be about, but didn't know the debth of information about the Firefly Universe I had missed.
So, before I continue to critique Serenity I must say that in order to understand a large portion of the film, you
must watch Firefly, in it's entirity.
Unfortunately there are quite a few characters which, I'm not going to go to indepth about. (For a very indepth understanding of the film, visit
Wikipedia's Firefly page) Essentially the vessell is captained by Malcom Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), a rebel who fought the universal government but now is a smuggler; First Mate is Zoe Washburn (Gina Torres) who served under Mal, and very loyal to him, in the Battle of Serenity in the Unification War leading to the name of the vessel; Zoe is married to the ships pilot Hoban Washburn (Alan Tudyk) , nicknamed "Wash", who is a very good pilot and didn't chose sides in the war; Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin) is the resident mercenary/hired gun who is selfish but looks out for the others when in battle; Kaylee Frye (Jewl Staite) is the ships engineer who keeps the "heap" in the sky by jerry rigging everything to get it to work, very loving, sincere, and kind to everyone; Simon Tam (Sean Maher) is the resident Doctor who keeps looking out for his sister, River (Summer Glau) , who had been psychologically altered by the Alliance; Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin) is a compainion (prostitute) who has hired the Serenity's shuttle for her work and is important in both the series and less seen but more important in the movie; Derrial Book (Ron Glass) is a shepard (preacher) who has a much smaller role in the film compared to his intergal part of the series; and the Operative (
Chiwetel Ejiofor) who is searching for River Tam in order to bring her back to the Alliance for more testing. Hence the necessity of viewing the series first.
The movie is definately the ending to the series, much better than the last episode of the series. The directing was good, the music was good, and the acting was just as good as in the series. Same characters, same writer/director, and same music (it seems to me at least) which leads me to understand that Serenity is the final part of the Firefly Universe, for now at least. Without divulging any more information, I'd like to say it's defintely worth the 3 year wait, although I never saw the series on tv, I know that fans waited way too long after the last episode left them hanging.
Summary: Watch the series first and you'll enjoy the film; if not, you may be a little lost. Very enjoyable if you like the series, Sci-fi may be too much for some, so it all depends on taste.
Movie:
Series:
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The wild wild west Texas, basketball and racism
It seems as though there have been some movies that have taken the truth and leaned on it a bit in order to make it more dramtic, this is one of those movies.
Glory Road is definately a emotional film about a high school girls coach moving to west Texas to coach Divison 1 basketball at Texas Western (UTEP now). Coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) moves his family to West Texas in order to coach and is hoping to win the national championship with an all black starting line up in the 1966 season leading to controversy and a good story. Not entirely truth, but closer than most "based on a true story" movies.
Granted I enjoy uplifting movies like these, they make me feel all warm 'n fuzzy inside. Well, not fuzzy, just warm. Anyway, I enjoyed it. It's entertaining with the 60's music and the directing in the games is intense. As it is no longer in the theatre I'd have to say it's definately worth renting sometime you're looking for an uplifting movie. But don't research previously; that I always seem to do wrong, I should stop that. No overacting, no true underacting; no characters I wish were left out of the script just so the actor wouldn't've been there, which is always a good thing.
Summary: Enjoyed the film, but don't take the truth to the bank.
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"Perhaps there is truth in this illusion."
As often as Edward Norton is in a film I'm usually seeing them, and Paul Giamatti films are a must see as well, but the two together just forces me to see it (as if I wouldn't anyway). Walking in, I was hoping the
Illusionist would a great movie with two great actors leading the film. Also in it were Jessica Biel and Rufus Sewell.
As suggested by the title there is an illusionist, Eisenheim (Edward Norton), who appears in Vienna and performs his show which causes the Chief Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti) to arrest him, cutting a performance short. Uhl, visits the Crown Prince (Rufus Sewell) who asks to know the past of this "legendary" illusionist, which begins our story. As a young carpenters boy, Eisenheim meets a magician who gives him a gift before the old man and the tree he was leaning on disappears. Years later the young Eisenheim meets the young Sophie while he is balancing an egg on a stick (weird kids). They fall in love, but their love cannot last as his parents are poor and her parents are rich and noble. So, he disappears for 15 years to return with amazing illusions which everyone enjoys including the aged Sophie (Jessica Biel), who doesn't recognize him immediately. Thus begins the supsensful, astonighingly intricate, story of love, tyrannical power, and nostalgic want.
The film is several hours long and it doesn't feel like it is. There is not one uneccesary scene in the entire movie. There were only two problems I have with the film: 1) the extrodinarily long opening credits; 2) some of the characters lose the Prussian accent in some scenes, most notably Rufus Sewell becomes British in a few lines, Ms. Biel becomes American in a few, but Ed and Paul leave nothing to doubt that they are Prussian. The soundtrack is awesome driving the films pulse from the beginning to the end.
The directing made me question how films like these are so underrated. The angles, the darkness that exists throughout the entire movie it seems, and the mysteriousness all help create a film that is supsensful, mysterious, and thought provoking from beginning to end.
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I'm a little tired now, so I'm gonna hit the hay and try to add a few tomorrow.
Feel free to comment, thanks.
~Steve
