Tag: review

With Memorial Day coming and going last week, we have entered the prime summer movie season. This is what I’ve been training for. And it doesn’t seem to be a very good one.

My ratings so far, if you’re keeping score go like:

Mission Impossible 3: 2 stars
An American Haunting: 1 star
Brick: 3 stars
Poseidon: 2 stars
The Da Vinci Code: 2 stars

As you can see, my impression of this season is rather low. The highest rated was Brick and even then, I gave it a favorable rating because of its indie status. So let’s see what else I have to review.

On Memorial Day, I ponied up the cash to help X-Men III: The Last Stand make incredible box office numbers. That’s the best I can say about it. They cameoed many characters from the X-Men comics: Psylock?!, Jubilee?!, Omega Red. They were listed in the credits, but I didn’t catch them on screen. Too many mutants shown in too short a time.

That wouldn’t have been the only problem, if not for the lame story. Why did they have the Phoenix saga plotline when it was nothing like the Phoenix saga? She comes back, but is not a priordial force, just some scizophrenic part of Jean Grey. Trapped in a psychic cocoon. Please.

Sir Ian McKellan again breathes life to another limp movie as Magneto. Except the lameness of this story crushed his energy and we were left with a demagnetized Magneto.

This one stinks.

2 of 5 stars.

Tonight, I caught The Breakup. Do not read any farther if you don’t want the movie SPOILED.

It was supposedly a romantic comedy, or at least that was the impression the commercials gave off. “Come see Jennifer Anniston and Vince Vaughn fall in love. On screen. (and off)” Yet, I did not laugh in the first 25 minutes. And romance is the last thing you think of after leaving the theatre. I was prepared to give it another 2 star rating, except the ending made me bump it up. You know I am a sucker for the boy not getting the girl endings. Bittersweet. I love it. They didn’t get back together. They meet cute on the street a few months down the road and we are left with filling in the blanks of the future. I vote for not getting back together. I like it like that. So the ending surprised me and had me feeling better about the movie. It saved the day. Of course, I should’ve seen it coming.

Anyway, I didn’t laugh. I didn’t feel mushy. Yet, I liked the movie.

3 of 5 stars.

The Breakup was another movie (The Family Stone, Failure to Launch) that sounded weird. I think they hardly added any ambient noise to the soundtrack.

I can’t be like onelittleseedling and match his review of The DaVinci Code, but let me put my thoughts in.

It was long. An hour too long. I was bored by it. Plus, those Opus Dei guys are creepy. And it all became a search for the holy grail. In France. Don’t they already have one?

Yet, Audrey Tautou was super cute in it. Even when she was angry. Or threatening. I felt like hugging her. I hope they don’t blame the failure of the script on her. She deserves more cute roles in more american films.

2 of 5 stars.

Poseidon

This film had no heart. It should’ve cranked up the camp factor, but tried to play it straight. Plus, it was confusing as to who was the Gene Hackman character, Josh Lucas or Kurt Russell. And both of them played their roles as if they were Ernest Borgnine. When you wish for Shelley Winters to save the day, you know you’ve reached rock bottom.

May this Titanic wreck of a movie sink to the depths from which it came.

2 of 5 stars

Brick

This film felt like a Cohen brothers flick. When the car drives by the protagonist, I kept waiting for old guy to point at the character and give him a thumbs up a la Blood Simple. And the movie was straight up similar in plot to The Big Lebowski. In fact, I think that The Big Lebowski did a better detective story than Brick.

Overall, this film was trying to hard. You can see where it was being clever. The dialogue was hard to understand, not for the lingo, but because the mix was muddled. I never did get what he said in the end.

3 of 5 stars

An American Haunting. The only thing scary about this flick was why I paid money to see it on the first night.

I wanted to be scared.

Except this wasn’t the flick to do it. When the ghosts turn out to have been someone’s imagination/projection, then it ruins all creepiness that could’ve been had from the film. An actual explanation turns the hokum into hokum. It’s like the screenwriters had no conviction in their scary story.

Find something better.

1 of 5 stars

Mission Impossible III. Where’s the McGuffin? Where’s the McGuffin? Where’s the Rabbi.. McGuffin?

That is the movie in a nut shell.

While I went into the theatre hoping for some of that magical summer movie magic, this film did not deliver. It was more like the magic found on the boob tube. That can be the case since the director, JJ Abrams, was responsible for “Lost” and “Alias.” Speaking of which, I had the distinct feeling that if they spent anymore time at the IMF headquarters, they’d find Sydney Bristow somewhere in the back.

A lot of the tropes, Abrams used was straight out of his television series. For example, the opening sequence harkens back to Alias’s first episode. Whatever?!

2 of 5 stars

The Sentinel is one of those movies that suck, but doesn’t suck too much truly hate. The plot is predictable (the mole was easy to pick out), the acting was over the top (Micheal Douglas?! wha?!), and the suspense was not there. Yet it was an enjoyable hour and a half. I really don’t remember much about the movie. It will be another movie in the long list that I am going to be accruing this summer. So, the summer movie season may turn out to be okay after all.

3 of 5 stars.

But wait. I just had to say that it must suck to be this presidential administration. Look at the movies that have come out. V for Vendetta. American Dreamz. Now this flick. Each taking a potshot at the current administration with The Sentinel actively fantisizing the assassination of the president. When you’re unpopular, it makes it easy to kick you once you’re down.

As promised from this post, my thoughts on American Dreamz.

Notice that it’s “my thoughts” now rather that a review. I am thinking on changing how I review the movies I watch, because they are not reviews that a Siskel Ebert would write, but just observations I had while exiting the theatre.

American Dreamz stunk. It tried to be satirical about current events, but it tried too hard. You can see the sweat on the forehead of the writer/director, Paul Weitz, as he told the story. He went about satirizing today’s issues, but did it in such a way, that it felt extremely heavy handed. You could not miss the point that he was trying to convey, because he was hitting you over the head with it every 5 minutes of the film. It stunk up the screen, oozed into the theatre aisles, and wafted its way to a seventh place opening weekend position.

We know that the current situation in America is fucked up. We know our president is a fuck up. We know that American Idol and reality shows reward the talentless, ruthless, insipid person. Why am I watching a movie about it?

It was so bad that I sympathized with the president. He could not be so dumb in real life (Yet he is!!!). It was bad that he made that dumb ass sympathetic. This current president sucks too much to be made sympathetic. He’s just plain pathetic. Weitz should never had made his President Staton a sympathetic character, since the current occupant of the White House does not deserve sympathy.

This only adds ammunition to defenders of Bush that say there is a vast left conspiracy trying to make the president look bad. It’s not a conspiracy if it’s out in the open.

1 of 5 stars.