Movies: March, April

[trinityvixen]

Despite being late to work and having been actually busy yesterday for, like, two whole hours!, I am soooo bored today. So, it's time to catch up on movies I've seen.

I think instead of breaking them down by the month, I'm going to do something useful and break it down it enjoyed/indifferent/wanted to stamp on the disc and set fire to the writers.

Had fun with these:
The Full Monty - To date, I am still prone to start dancing myself whenever "Hot Stuff" comes on the radio.

Kung Fu Panda - Much more fun than a movie with Jack Black saying "ski-doosh" ought to have been.

The Princess Diaries - Oh, it's silly, don't get me wrong, but not terrible.

Bottle Shock - Alan Rickman is fabulous; what else do you need to know?

Scott Pilgrim vs the World - It may be blasphemy to say as much, but I'm reading the comics now, and uh, the movie was better...

Shutter Island - Good thriller, but not exactly the feel-good movie of the year.

Mega Piranha - There was a scene where a guy on his back moved his feet like he was pedaling an invisible bicycle so he could kick away CGI mega piranhas, so what's not to like?

Heavenly Creatures - An infinitely better movie taking advantage of how creepy it is for someone as beautiful as Kate Winslet to be evil than The Reader.

Kick-Ass - I'd like to join the chorus of people wishing they could be Hit Girl when they grew up.

Resurrection - I expected this to be cheese, given that it was a thriller starring Christopher Lambert (who was supposed to be Creole?), but it was decent enough.

Walk All Over Me - I know it would be typecasting, but if Tricia Helfer were a dominatrix in every movie, would anyone really complain?

The Losers - Okay, so it played out as sort of a knock-off A-Team, but I liked it.

It Might Get Loud - Even to a music idiot like myself, this was fun stuff.
My indifference, let me show you it:
Twist of Faith - Very sad, very complicated documentary, but one that ultimately teaches us nothing about a thorny subject.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - I liked Robert Redford's terseness, but otherwise ::yawn:: another Western.

Cop Out - One character having me in fits does not rescue the whole movie, alas.

Silver Bullet - Even though it's adapted from one of the weaker Stephen King books, this could have been better.

Clash of the Titans - The whole movie should just have been Mads Mikkelsson growling at Atia of the Julii because they're the only actors in it.

Surrogates - Alarmingly interesting set up sadly not used to its fullest, most creepy extent.

Megashark vs Giant Octopus - This should have been awesomer, DAMN IT.

Bedtime Stories - It didn't out-and-out suck for an Adam Sandler movie, but it wasn't exactly brilliant either.

Blood and Chocolate - Still waiting for that penultimate, fascinatingly realized werewolf movie.

Logan's Run - Cool ideas and premise, but over all too long and too dry.

Kitchen Privileges - Rape victim homeowner doesn't know if downstairs tenant is actually serial killer--nor does the movie.

Away We Go - Some touching moments, but too forced by half.

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde - Sister Hyde should have been let out more, 's all I'm saying--rrrooowr, girl!

There are people who should die for these:
The OH in Ohio - I didn't need to see Danny DeVito give Parker Posey an orgasm.

Bottle Rocket - Wes Anderson's best movie was The Royal Tenenbaums, and nothing else he's ever done (including this movie) will convince me otherwise.

Riverworld - I didn't think this new SyFy movie could be less interesting than the last, but, hey! They managed! (Casting Tahmoh Penniket, he of the 8-foot-tall, leaning-down-into-smaller-people's-faces-leering, was probably how they pulled off sucking this hard.)

Princess of Mars - A former underwear model plays the hero, who is trying to rescue the titular (oh, pun intended there, my friends) princess played by a former porn star.

Planet 51 - One of those random CGI movies nobody has heard of and no one should waste time seeing.

Comments

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's a lot of movies. I read Blood and Chocolate and didn't care to bother with the film.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World - It may be blasphemy to say as much, but I'm reading the comics now, and uh, the movie was better...

I thought the first volume was awesome, but #2 (which I think you were reading last night) was weaker. 3-5 pick up and are also awesome. I suspect you'd enjoy them more if you were more or an old school video gamer. That said, the movie was excellent.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, one was good, much of which was faithfully reproduced in the movie. Two was...er, all right, I guess. Onto three!

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

I thought the movie was out in August? Y'all see a sneak preview? I haven't heard anything about it yet.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Indeed we did--but the film wasn't totally finished, so we're probably going to see it again. It was really good, though!

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

*dies* WHAT

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

They had a screening here--one of the perks of being in New York and having nerdy friends in the know--so I got to see it months ago. Highly recommend it!

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

You missed Malice in Wonderland!

I completely agree on Kung Fu Panda, though. And Kick-Ass, for the most part. The Losers was turn-your-brain-off fun. And I remember liking The Full Monty, but it's been years.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I'm only doing movies in months that have ended--the subject is "Movies: March, April." I have Memorial Day weekend coming up and if I don't see 10 movies in that time, I'll be disappointed with myself. Expect a May-related post soon.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

Ah, my bad--I overlooked that part of the post title. :)

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

I watched Bottle Shock a little while ago - loved Alan Rickman (always love Alan Rickman), but I think the story - interesting in itself - got more than a little lost in that ridiculous love triangle. And, I'm sorry, but Chris Pine? like WTF was that wig he was wearing?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The story ought to have been good enough to tell on its own, I agree. The weird love-triangle thing was worse for the wig, the fact that the girl couldn't act (and hid her Aussie accent very poorly), and the unaddressed racial issues going on with the third member of the triangle. I mean, honestly, the race issues with the rich white guy and the poor but sophisticated-palate-having Hispanic family ought to have either been dropped or made more of the center of the film. For shame.

And yes, that wig was awful, but as far as bad hair on Chris Pine goes, you can't do much worse than what they did to his head in Smoking Aces.

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen Smoking Aces - but if his hair is worse in that, then I'll avoid. :-P Also, yes, bad actress, and the racial storyline shouldn't have been in there at all, since, being the nerdy girl I am, I looked up the actual story, and that dude didn't even come into the picture until several years later and never worked for their vineyard....they just brought him back into the story in order to have a love triangle/racial/class/noble immigrant element to the story, which totally didn't work. I didn't understand the boxing either....like, what? Why was that necessary? Especially more than once?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Well, if there's one thing I learned from BSG, it's that there's always time for boxing!!!one!

It bothers me that the story of immigrant versus white, landed guy is given such a brush off. As if nothing matters so long as the product is good. This ignorance of the real politics and problems of racial resentments is why Libertarians are a bunch of fucktards. They think so long as you do the best, the rest will sort itself out. Riiiiight.

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

Indeed - without going into the politics of it all, what I felt about that storyline was that they made a worse racial statement in the film by trying to half-heartedly deal with it than they would have if they'd left it out entirely. It was the noblesse oblige feel of it that really turned my stomach - "look! Latinos were/are discriminated against! Look at ugly, bald, white truck driver being racist! But then, ooh, he makes his own wine, and it's good! Because he is noble brown man!" Blech. Especially when, after the skinny blonde is seemingly going for the "Hispanic guy with a better palate, soul, and more appreciation of the art" or whatever, she somehow ends up with the white guy with a lot money and a vineyard at the end? What the what?

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - I liked Robert Redford's terseness, but otherwise ::yawn:: another Western.
Really? Woooow. You have no taste in Westerns.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I dislike Westerns generally, so it takes a very snappy one, indeed, to really impress me.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid thrives, where it does, on the interaction of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Don't get me wrong, that's entertaining. But it's not enough to sustain the story for 2 hours. The ostensible overriding theme is the closing of the west, but it then diverts into nonsense south of the border. It's not enough, dude.

Westerns I have liked? The Magnificent Seven? Gun Fight at the OK Corral? Red River? I can't recall too many others just now, but those are acknowledged as being, basically, the uber best of the best.

[xannoside.livejournal.com]

I highly recommend 3:10 to Yuma (either one) and Unforgiven.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Both are on my netflix queue!

[six-demon-bag.livejournal.com]

HA! This is magnificent!

Ugh, and I just noticed there are more mini-reviews hidden behind cuts than I first realized, so I may have to come back and do more commenting. Anyway...

I fell in love with Alan Rickman the first time I saw Die Hard as a child.

I've been hearing good things about Kung-Fu Panda, so I'm not all that surprised to see another fairly positive review.

Hahahaha Mega Piranha. :D

Never heard of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, and it's based on a comic? Huh. Speaking of comic-based movies, I just saw the trailer for Jonah Hex in front of Iron Man 2 the other day and never even knew it was being made before that. Where have I been?

Butch Cassidy...: I've been curious about that one, but your review has at least temporarily convinced me I don't need to waste my time with it.

Silver Bullet: Saw it when I was maybe twelve or thirteen and it wasn't as scary as most horror movies were to me, but it still scared the shit out of me. Probably doesn't age so well, though, huh.

Alright, I have to go, but I'm will be back. : )

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Alan Rickman has been in plenty of lesser movies, but he's always been good in them. Die Hard is just one of many reasons he rocks.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World has an awesome trailer online now, I'd recommend it. Without having read the manga (it's really more manga-like in English than it is just a comic), I saw the trailer and was convinced to go to a screening. It's a must-see for classic gamers, too. Jonah Hex looks like it might be a really bad mistake, which is a shame.

I admit to being not a fan of the Western, so take my Butch Cassidy review with a grain of salt. If you are similarly not inclined to the genre, I'd skip it. Rent The Magnificent Seven instead. Much better, which makes sense since it's a Western version of Seven Samurai which is awesome.

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

Die Hard was only worth watching because of him. Young hot Alan in a crisp clean suit = WAY SEXIER than sweaty beefy gross Bruce Willis.

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqXX6kuk_XQ

Obama Llama song!