Tag Archive for 'Comedy'

Review: Kick Ass

Published on May 16, 2010 in Review. 0 Comments Tags: 18A, Action, Buy, Classic, Comedy, FPS, Fun, Game, Gore, Rent, Review.

Not only seeing this movie, but finding the time to write this review has been a difficult task. It took almost two weeks for us to actually get to go see Kick Ass, but once we had our pet hedgehog managed to escape. No one, nowhere had pre-informed us that hedgehogs are escape artists, had we known we would have probably kept with the original idea for his name of Harry, instead we have Henry, apparently Houdini reincarnate.

We also had a fun visit from my wife’s cousin, and spent this weekend attending another one of her cousins weddings, all amongst a regular schedule that doesn’t usually include time for review writing. We also saw the Nightmare on Elm Street during this time, which will be receiving a dutifully short review (for better or worse), and I will be keeping this review as succinct as possible. Anyway, onto the movie.

What I liked:

Well pretty much everything. Matthew Vaughn is one of my favorite directors and despite a very short directing list, I’m anticipating his future works (another by the writer of the Kick Ass and Wanted comics). He has a great ability to make scripts Hollywood-acceptable, without making the content Hollywood. An eleven-year-old girl kills, maims and dismembers people and people showed greater concern over her characters potty mouth.

I’m sorry, I’d have more problem with my children being mass murderers before hitting pubity than hearing them use ‘cunt’ in an insult. Perhaps my moral values are off from society, but I generally rate vulgarity below violence on the ranking of character vices to avoid. I would have thought the religious right would be with me on this, Blasphemy is not as big a sin as Murder, and vulgarity isn’t explicitly a sin in and of itself. It’s also worth noting the 3rd commandment isn’t a proclivity against swearing as in vulgarity, but against oath swearing under the name of the lord.

The action scenes were awesome, especially Hit Girl’s main scene. The choreography was great, and the first-person view through her night-vision goggles is possibly the only fan-play to FPS gamers that was executed in a good way, usually any first-person perspective in a film is horrific even when it’s not done artistically as fan-play.

What I disliked:

Was honestly virtually nothing. I would have preferred Mark Millar’s ending to the story, however that ending isn’t well suited to film. I can understand why Vaughn would use a more commercial ending, after all he does need to earn a living and he’s selling to an American market, not the British market where unfortunate endings are more accepted.

My other problem with it was that the flow of the film died a little bit with the sequel setup, which I know was in the original material, but could have really been cut out for the film. Although, story wise, I can understand the inclusion because it’s an illustrating point that’s often discussed in comic works that the existence of Super Heroes/Villains will cause need for the rise of the other.

Overall: 9/10

This is one of the greatest movies I’ll see all year, and I don’t even need to know what else is coming out to claim this. However, it certainly isn’t going to be the greatest movie I’ll see this decade, although I don’t preclude Vaughn taking that title.

Judgement: Buy it, rent it, watch it in theaters, whichever you choose, it’ll be worth it.

Review: Repo Men

Published on April 2, 2010 in Review. 0 Comments Tags: Action, Comedy, Disappointing, Flawed, Gore, Overpriced, Review.

This was a strange one, not because of the whole sci-fi artificial organ repossession deal, which I can buy into. This was strange because of a random mixture of sex, gore and an odd twist for the end. Jude Law and Forest Whitaker made this an interesting action movie, but it was really little more than a good action movie.

What I liked (caveat edition):

Law and Whitaker made this fun, and funny, to watch. They played their parts well and were passable as life-long friends, which is what made the twist at the end believable – not worthwhile, just believable.

The story overall was good, however it seemed like there was a lot of avenues the story could have gone down that would have been potentially better, but didn’t. The story kept hitting intersections, but it never seemed apparent why it never took a left or a right. It had a plot similar to ‘The Island’ with Ewan McGregor, however it had neither Ewan McGregor nor a meaningful ending, just a bizarre twist that left me wondering why I’d bothered to sit through the last forty-minutes of action.

The action scenes were a Matrix part 2/3 affair with choreography spewing from every knife hole, which consumed a lot of time that could have been used for either more comedy or more story.

What I disliked (unfortunately without caveats):

A hallmark of a bad writer is the reliance on a Deus Ex Machina to resolve a plot problem. We’re not talking Lord of the Flies usage where the entire novel revolves around them trying to get rescued and right at the crucial time they do, I don’t have a problem with that – if anything it’s less of a plot twist because it’s now frequently expected and can in fact be a rewarding end. No, I’m talking this is a War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise movie) ending where there’s no mention of disease and suddenly all the aliens die from influenza like they’re a bunch of Red Indians dragged into a Pox House, it was sheer irrelevance. Aside from a pre-mention or two of the literal ‘machina’ the twist comes out of nowhere.

I suppose the writer didn’t want a happy ending to the movie, which I can give kudos for but his form of a tragic ending was as irrelevant to the story of the movie as if the movie Bambi had ended with the faun taking a shell of buckshot to the chest. As many can probably assume, the twist was so horrendous that I’m actually taking personal offence to it because not only I could have done better, but anyone reading this could have done better and a monkey hammering away gibberish on a typewriter would have produced a more sensible ending.

Another thing that bugged me was the random sex scenes that appeared to have been contrived solely for the purpose of upping the rating. Yes we get it the bible thumping rednecks at the MPAA can’t stand to see sex and violence in the same movie let alone the same scene, and a sure fire way to get the highest rating is to put sex and violence in the same scene. Of course instead of killing someone and harvesting their organs while they’re rolling around with a hooker in the sack to offend the MPAA, the writer and director for Repo Men decided it would be excellent to have the main characters have a sadomasochistic sex scene while they cut each other open for no apparent reason other than one of the many plot adventures of “well we can’t think of anything else” that this movie frequently took.

The plot is akin to The Lord of the Rings without the ring, they just travel to Mordor to say “fuck you viewer!” It’s good until you realize Frodo left the ring at home because he just wanted some alone time with Sam in a scary place to see if the whole fear-of-death aspect would help get them to share a sleeping bag like it seems to every woman in any Hollywood movie.

Overall: 6/10

This is my lowest review score so far for two reasons. One is because I usually can tell if a movie is going to suck out loud, and this one didn’t suck out loud per se, it just sucks in hindsight. The other reason is that while it was an entertaining romp with multiple action scenes that were enjoying to watch and Whitaker’s believability is the only reason this didn’t get a 4/10 for pissing me off.

A review is supposed to be impartial, and I am. I don’t judge on film makers past works, their reputation or anything I judge a movie solely on its merits and I believe I’d have been less annoyed if you’d have strung every pun against the British from every Simpson’s and Family Guy episode together – in fact I can see myself giving it a far higher review than this movie. Standing on its own merits, if they’d have followed their non-sense policy of ignoring all the crossroads available to them in plot development and followed it to its logical conclusion it would have probably hit around a 7.5/10, but after skipping many logical plot alternatives they decide to take a completely illogical plot twist at the end in a Douche Ex Machina move by the writer and director.

If I can recommend anything to anyone on this movie is that it likely isn’t worth the price to rent it from blockbuster, and probably isn’t worth wasting one of your Netflix discs on when you could get an actual good movie.

Judgement: Wait till it hits TV or a movie channel.

Review: Alice in Wonderland

Published on March 19, 2010 in Review. 0 Comments Tags: Action, Buy, Comedy, Entertaining, Fun, Funny, Johnny Depp, Review, Tim Burton.

My greatest fear for this movie was the huge threat of no originality that frequently plagues remakes of classics. However for better, or some might argue worse, Burton didn’t stick to the books like they were a religious text.

What I liked:

The story was excellent, it was a merger between Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, with new material. One of my biggest problems with the books, and thus the faithful recreations in movies, is that they were written to be easily red to children. The divisions in the story are so alarmingly strong that you could cut the spine of the book between certain chapters and never know the two belonged together, quite frankly it’s a book of short stories. However what Burton achieves is a contiguous and seamless work, there’s no concrete divisions. It’s fluid, and it’s elegant, which allows the story to be gripping.

Despite many complaints that the movie is lacking emotion (it’s based on a Victorian Era book, are you serious? Lack of emotion? Who’s a moron? Lots of incompetent reviewers working for prestigious newspapers that can’t be bothered to research a movies source material even though 99% of them will have read the book and likely noticed its lack of emotion) I found it to have ample amounts for its source material. Also, I believe some people really need to look up what really falls under the category of ‘emotion’. The movie had great optimism to it, while also providing the overwhelming feel of pessimism in the face of daunting odds. Burton’s Red Queen is the deepest I’ve seen of any Alice creation, she’s consumed by jealousy but reveals she’s actually got good in her but her life and upbringing have guided her away from being good.

Acting was top notch, but then every actor has a credit list the length of my arm so that’s expected. The art and direction were amazing, better even than Burton’s previous works, which is a commendation itself.

What I disliked:

There were a few lines that were hard to understand, this wasn’t a real problem for me (fast spoken lines in a Scottish accent don’t fool me easily, I had to deal with a Scottish substitute teacher in a French lesson in highschool, since then I’ve never had a problem understanding the Scots) as I’m English and have first hand experience with the accents. I know my wife had difficulty with many of the lines, as I was acting as translator. So I can only imagine the trouble some people had. However, as a Brit I’ve had to learn American accents, so I can hardly criticise a movie for making Americans learn accents from Briton. If you expect to sell your culture globally, you should damn well be open to getting some back.

Beyond a few lines people may find inaudible, I can’t criticise the movie on much. Anne Hathaway played the White Queen well, she just looked exceptionally gaunt beyond her usual… gauntness. Something about her bugged me, I’ve still not put my finger on it. It just feels like something’s not right about her as the White Queen. I believe a bit more attention to the make up could have likely resolved it to my satisfaction.

Overall: 9/10

This is the best Alice in Wonderland I’ve seen or read, basically because it feels like an adult story. Even when I originally read Alice in Wonderland, I believe I had surpassed the stories age target. I’ve got about a decade and a half on my original reading of the story, and I doubt a faithful reproduction would have held my attention beyond the first twenty minutes. This kept my attention locked until the finish.

Judgement: Buy it! (see it in theatres if you can)

Groundhog Day

Published on February 2, 2010 in News. 0 Comments Tags: Baxter, Bunny, Comedy, Groundhog, News, Rabbit, Weather, Winter.

Those damn rodents are telling us what to do again! According to the Pennsylvania marmot it has predicted six more weeks of winter, thank you very much! Or, in an alternate take, it has cursed us with another six weeks. Could this groundhog have the means to control the planetary climate?

I believe it’s safe to say, yes. We must all hail this furry mammalian until its winter spell is complete so that we can venture out of our properties in T-shirts and shorts. Or, perhaps, we could just wear winter coats like we have been all winter and ignore the little varmint.

In related news, I may conduct a scientific test on the foresight capabilities of small mammals using Baxter and see if I can get an accuracy rate nearing that of an 8-ball. Or not, you know, depending on how the day goes and depending on whether or not I want to anger the rabbit.

Review: The Princess and the Frog

Published on January 23, 2010 in Review. 0 Comments Tags: Buy, Children, Classic, Comedy, Disney, Disney Classic, Kids, Review, Romance.

I was pleasantly surprised by Disney’s return to traditional animation. It was funny, witty and well written; something we haven’t seen much of from Disney lately. The movie is genuinely deserving of being in the Disney Classics.

Here’s why I liked it:

Most importantly, the voice acting was very well done. The voices suited the characters, they weren’t just planted in the role because of who they were; I didn’t realise I knew Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) from as many things as I did. There were, obviously, some name-drop extras, however John Goodman and Oprah Winfrey fitted their roles well.

The story was strong, with a few good twists. Not necessarily unexpected twists, but they’ll certainly be a delight for the young children this movie is targeted towards. It is enjoyable for adults, which the Disney Classics usually are. The emotions in the movie feel genuine, which is a must for any romance.

The musical numbers were excellent, and I’m talking Aladdin & The Lion King good. The plot existed and wasn’t as holy as Swiss cheese, it made sense throughout the entire movie for the characters to be doing exactly what they were.

And here’s what I disliked:

The key problem in this movie was pacing. The beginning was fun, however progress through the bayou felt a little stuck in the mud. It had its humour, but the start of the middle section had a serious pacing issue. This resolved itself and recovered for a good ending, however here’s a message to Disney: You’re selling this to small children, I didn’t want to sit still during the slow period, why would an 8 year old?

Other than pacing, there weren’t any glaring problems. The action and adventure felt genuine and not forced. The romance between Prince Naveen and Tiana had feeling. Most notably, this felt like an actual movie, it didn’t feel like it was created to play for a black demographic because it’s an ‘untapped market’ by Disney. It’s a romance set in New Orleans, end of. The fact Tiana is African-American is as irrelevant to the story as it should be, it’s a story about love.

Overall: 8/10

This is a great family-film, and not one that the parents have to sit on either end of their children so they don’t escape while the adults sleep. It’s 97 minutes, and about 85 of them will keep you genuinely interested. Most importantly, it is well worth spending the money on if you’ve got children under 14, and worth it regardless of age if you’re a Disney fan.

The Princess and the Frog is a movie that should be seen in theatres with the kids, and should be bought on DVD/Blu-ray by any fan of Disney’s Classics. It’s worthy of dropping the cash on.

Judgement: Buy it

Review: Daybreakers

Published on January 22, 2010 in Review. 0 Comments Tags: 18A, Cliche, Comedy, Gore, Horror, Rent, Review, Vampire.

I went into this movie with some hesitation. Vampire movies have been hitting heights recently, and the literature market is being flooded with vampiric effluence, so it’s really only a short time before a flood of poorly made vampire movies flood the market. Having seen the trailers, I saw that clichés were abounding.

I was pleasantly surprised that I actually enjoyed this movie, here’s why:

Horror movies are inevitably funny, usually due to their low budgets and the fact they usually take themselves overly serious certainly doesn’t help. Daybreakers feels like it was doomed to this track, however the Spierig brothers appear to have realized somewhere along the way that their script for a serious vampire-sci-fi movie (yes, a very bad combination to begin with) was hilarious. All credit must go to Willem Dafoe who made this movie entertaining. He arrives roughly halfway through, and the seriousness slowly converts to humour, just in time for most of the actual action.

Surprisingly the duality in the picture works well. The seriousness in the beginning aids in making the scenes jumpy and tense, while the relaxed-humour towards the end makes the inevitable gore festival of an 18A a laugh-fest.

Here are the reasons why I didn’t like the movie:

Clichés abounded throughout, and to name a few: No reflections in mirrors, seriously? Sadly yes. Vampires set on fire in sunlight, but I’ll forgive this one as it is actually used for an interesting and unique plot point. Vampires explode when they die, but apparently not when they burn to death.

The ending isn’t a cliff hanger, it isn’t even an ending. Nothing is resolved, there’s no feel of accomplishment for watching through an epic-adventure. I suppose this is to leave it open for a sequel, however it could have been done much better. It was a very ungratifying end.

Overall: 7/10

For fans of Willem Dafoe or comedy-horrors, this movie is worth watching. For the rest of the general public, it certainly isn’t worth the ticket price in the theatres. If you like seeing things on the big screen, perhaps look to see if your local theatre has a slow-day deal, like popcorn and drink included in the ticket price as at least you’re getting a little more for your money.

This is definitely a movie to rent, it’s an enjoyable watch and doesn’t feel like you wasted an unrecoverable 98 minutes. The ending is a bit weak, but the rest of the movie is definitely strong, and doesn’t suffer from a killer slow-period in the middle, in fact the movie as a whole is very well paced.

Judgement: Rent it