The ‘This Movie Is Gonna Suck So Bad’ Factor

When I first heard about the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, I’ll admit it… I was excited. The first film was everything I had hoped it would be. It was funny, it was action packed, it had absolutely incredible visual effects.

Then I saw the trailer for Dead Man’s Chest. It reminded me of another sequel, The Mummy Returns, not a good sign. It followed a certain formula, take everything that worked from the first film, and do more of it. One of the things that was so good about The Curse of the Black Pearl, and The Mummy for that matter, was how cheesy it was. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a negative. It walked a fine line, and as a result, was awesome.

Dead Man’s Chest and The Mummy Returns decided to do away with said line. The resulting movies were so bad, that I honestly can’t even remember them.

I’d put money on the same mistake being made again with At World’s End.

The Review

Don’t get me wrong. I went into this movie expecting it to be a disappointment. There was a small glimmer of hope, but I was prepared for a bad movie. This usually is beneficial for a film, if I’m expecting crap I might be sufficed with mediocrity. To this day I can’t say whether I liked X-Men because it was a good movie or because every movie leading up to it’s release that summer was a painful disappointment.

I don’t remember the first sign that things were going horribly wrong. There were a couple. The film felt rushed and poorly thought out. I can’t really comment on how well it tied everything together, because I honestly can’t remember anything about the second film.

Johnny Deep’s first appearance in the film, I leaned over to say, “This is gonna get annoying fast.” Sure enough, a minute into Johnny Deep’s first scene, it had. While it was his performance that made the first film so enjoyable, every subsequent performance has been more and more annoying. My biggest fear of the film was that they would take something that worked from the first film and just do more. This was exactly what they did. This is not to say that his performance was all bad, he did deliver some of the films best lines, few and far between as they were.

I’m not one to give anything away, and maybe it’s just because I’m down on love and the entire concept of marriage, but the love story just had to go. I don’t feel it added anything except for a few more subplots that I just didn’t care about. I guess the biggest problem is that the only reason I was rooting for anyone was because I knew who I was supposed to be rooting for. None of the characters had admirable traits, and I couldn’t careless who “won”.

Not to say too many bad things about the film, I will say the visual effects were good. But this hardly makes up for it’s poor execution in every other aspect of the film.

The Consensus

It’s things like Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End that make me happy that I have Morbid Mental Degeneration. Because it makes it possible for me to watch the first film and say, “Thank God they never made a sequel…”

The Things I Already Knew About This Movie

The first time I saw this trailer it was the most memorable thing about the movie it was attached to, I don’t even remember what movie it was, just that the normal 45 minute discussion after it was about how awesome 300 would be.

This morning I heard someone say that 300 was Gladiator meets Sin City. I thought, cool I liked both those movies.

This afternoon I got a recommendation from a friend who said, “Josh, you’ll love it. It’s got boobies, violence, and awesomeness.” I thought, cool I like all of those things.

This is a movie that won’t disappoint…

The Review

I get excited about movies. I’m not excited about every movie that I watch. Some more than others, but a good movie can make my week. Just as a bad movie can break my week. I was driving to the theater and I realized I was really excited to see this movie, the only thing that would’ve excited me more would be watching it with Dave. This was a movie that couldn’t disappoint. I went into it with that much confidence. Which worried me as I sat in the theater waiting for the lights to go down, typically movies I expect so much from end up being utter disappointments.

This was not one of those movies. From the the start of it I was engrossed. Now I’m not gonna sit here and pretend that I was always a fan of Frank Miller’s. I’m just not going to be that guy. I knew he was responsible for making Batman dark again. I knew he wrote comic books. I’ve never read one of his, after seeing this movie… I’m considering it, and I hate comic books.

I don’t even know where to start. I loved the way it was shot. It was vibrant and dark, which sounds like an oxymoron but somehow isn’t. I thought for awhile that the use of slow motion was going to get irritating. Visually it was a stunning film.

It was gory, but not in the way I had expected it to be. It wasn’t Gladiator gory. It wasn’t even Dawn of the Dead gory, as I had expected. It was comic book gory, it was cartoonishly gory. It was fitting I thought. About an hour in, I’d seen about three hundred people die and probably three severed heads flying in slow motion through the air at this point in the movie with out even blinking. But somehow seeing a horse, a rhino, and a couple elephants die was really hard to watch… It made me question what kind of a person I was.

The part when King Leonidas is giving it to Queen Gorgo hard and her boobs jiggled… Completely unnecessary, but totally hot…

I’m trying really hard not to say that this movie was just really fuckin’ awesome, I don’t think I’m gonna make it.

This movie was really fuckin’ awesome…

The Consensus

So, the Pathfinder trailer was pretty cool…

I was expecting alot from the movie, I left completely satisfied.  Deserving of a second viewing, and not to decide whether I liked it or not. Hands down, the best movie of the year, so far…

The Impossibility That I Will Not Like This Movie

David Fincher. If it’s a name you don’t know, hit yourself very hard… If it’s a name you know, you probably won’t need to read this review. It won’t do the film justice. Just watch the movie and love it. I first came to appreciate the absolute genius of David Fincher after watching Fight Club. I’d seen Se7en, but that was at a time that I naively believed that Steven Spielberg directed every movie… Yeah, I was a dumb kid… I hadn’t really planned on watching the Fight Club. But then a former boss of mine watched it and told me it was the worst movie he’d ever seen. With that I decided to watch it, not because I was in the mood for a bad movie, but because if Jay-Em hated it… It was probably going to be a good movie. So thank you Jay-Em…

The Review

I’ll start off by saying that I’m the wrong guy to write this. For several reasons really. The most important being that it will be impossible for me to give an unbiased opinion where David Fincher is concerned. Then take into consideration that I’m bad at writing reviews in general, I should just stop now.

The first thing that I liked about the movie were the studio logos. I know, that’s not quite what anyone cares about, but I liked it… The logos alone made you feel like you were watching an old movie. I know it wasn’t the Paramount and Warner Brothers logos that were being used in the late 60’s, but it achieved it’s purpose. It felt like you were watching a film from the late 80’s, where the story concluded. So yeah, a meaningless detail, that I really enjoyed.

Then the movie started for real, before I got over the awesomeness of the aged logos and the giddiness of seeing Fincher’s name one the big screen again for the first time since 2002.

The film lacked some of the visual styles I’d come to love, and yet still felt very much like a Fincher movie. It was like a toned down Se7en, focusing more on the strengths of the story and of it’s stellar cast, then on fancy camera moves and visual effects.  It was a beautifully shot film.

I have only one real complaint about the movie. While the general consensus from the crowd as we left the theater was that it was too long. I personally felt it could stand to be a bit longer. Seems like a silly complaint of a movie that was nearly three hours long. I felt that it jumped around too much, which is to be expected of a movie that spans twenty years.  There were parts it the beginning specifically that felt too choppy.  One of the best transitions showing a lapse in time I’ve seen, certainly in a really long time, was the erecting of the Transamerica Pyramid. The movie could have been longer. I could just see parts where the film had been edited down for time, and I just didn’t think it was necessary. It was without a doubt a smart move and I guess that’s what the Director’s Cut DVD is for.

The Consensus

Exactly as I suspected, I loved the movie. Only one question that remains: Do I love the movie based on it’s own merits or because of David Fincher? Maybe a second viewing will tell me for sure. So, what are you doing tomorrow night?

The Open Letter To Joel Schumacher

Joel Schumacher… You’ve let me down in the past, honestly you have. I first learned your name because of Batman. And even as a kid I could see that you ruined Batman. But after about 10 years I decided to forgive you. It was, after all, not your fault that Batman turned into such a joke. And lets not forget you gave us The Lost Boys and you made Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon just a little easier to play. I really liked Phone Booth and Tigerland , 8MM not so much…  Why do I have the feeling you’re about to let me down?

The Review

During the opening credits I leaned over to my friend and said, “this movie is gonna try too hard and never get there.”

It’s not that I find the premise of the movie unbelievable. I can really see how Numbers can make a person homicidal, the episode from three weeks ago is a prime example. I too sometimes find myself wanting to drive a sharp object into someone, or myself, when faced with complex mathematic equations. I get that, I really do.

But coming from a guy that reads too much into everything, seriously everything, I found that aspect of the movie absurd and ridiculous.

Visually the movie was appealing, with the exception of a couple “what exactly was the point of that” shots. It was seriously like, “yeah I get it, he’s freaking out, now can you please stop shaking the fucking camera now.” I did really like the overty saturated look the of the book sequences, although they even got a bit old after awhile.

While it did have it’s fair share of predictability through out, I will say I didn’t quite see that ending coming. I had my theories and even knew that they were going to try to pull fast one on me, they marginally succeeded. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite enough to save the movie.

Just remember if you can’t decipher the number 23 from the opening shot of a scene, it’s just not an important scene, this also was the most fun I had in the movie…

After it was all over I looked at my watch, 11:14. 11 plus 14 is 25, awesome we’re in the clear… That was however until I realized we had watched it in auditorium 2…

I did however sigh a big sigh of relief after sitting in the parking lot after the movie, numerically dissecting my name. That’s right, you heard it here first, I’m not, numerically, poised to become a psycho killer.

The Consensus

I think the dude sitting three rows behind me had the right idea as he slept through the the last two thirds of this movie, oh dear… 2 and 3, twenty-three….

The Pitch

Every so often a movie gets made that, in my own narcissistic mind, is made for the sole purpose to make me happy. This is such a movie.

Think The Big Hit but grittier. Like Collateral. The Big Hit meets Collateral. But grittier still, like it was directed by Joe Carnahan… Oh wait, it was directed by him. Now I am alittle ashamed to admit that I haven’t actually seen Narc. I remember renting it once upon a time and through no fault of my own had to return it before I got a chance to watch it. I want to watch it. In fact if I had been more prepared to write this, I would have rented it again… And actually watched it this time. I did however see Ticker. I was a really big fan of The Hire, but that’s beside the point. I’m not here to talk about The Hire or Ticker, I’m here to talk about Smokin’ Aces.

Now, I’m not special so I haven’t seen the movie yet. But from the two trailers I am special enough to have seen, I’m relatively confident enough to say this film will not disappoint. Expect incredible action sequences, random off the wall humor, and and complex story that propels itself. And this might be alittle reaching… But from the first poster, which reminds me of Rent, I expect random breaks into song. Sadly I doubt this. I’d totally pay to see an action/thriller/comedy/musical… Hollywood, get working on that…

The Review

This is my first attempt at reviewing a movie. Typically I would describe a movie in a single sentence laced with obscenities.

To say that this film was a completely disappointment wouldn’t quite to accurate. I mean it was pretty much what I thought it would be, just never quite to the extent that I had expected. The action sequence was fairly impressive. The story line, which attempted to be complex, was severely lacking and mindless.

Maybe I’ve just seen too many movies that tried to pull a fast one on me, or maybe it was just that predictable. Maybe it’s a good thing, seeing has how I was able to turn my brain off and just not think at all.

I guess it’s somehow fitting for my review of this movie to be slightly underwhelming… Although I probably should have written this, when I first saw the movie, a couple weeks ago when it was still fresh in my head. Next time the review won’t be so very very lame. Next time I’ll do better.

The Consensus

Every so often a movie gets made that, in my own narcissistic mind, is made for the sole purpose to make me happy. This was no such movie. I will say though, of all the people I watched this movie with I think I enjoyed it the most. Which isn’t saying much, seeings as how I’m still so indifferent towards it.