Pretty solid find on Netflix. This guy is a dick but they do a good job of making him not really seem like a total dick. Barry Pepper was over the top and kind of awesome. Keven Spacey deserved that Golden Globe nom.
This was extremely 80s/early 90s. It was enjoyable for what it was. I was expecting a generic buddy cop movie, and int he end it was that, but it did take a detour through prison so that was cool. Sly and Kurt are pretty terrible, I’ve seen them both be great, and they were totally phoning it in this time. And I don’t think the script made a ton of sense, but it got them into crazy action situations, which was probably the point. The main reason I watched this is because I needed to have something on in the background while I dealt with the child and this is currently featured on FilmSack so now I’ll have to listen to that episode.
How Did This Get Made? Another movie I watched for the podcast. It really wasn’t godawful terrible like some of them are, but there were just so many ridiculous plot points and characters that you need to sit back and really wonder, how is this a 35 MILLION DOLLAR MOVIE. $35 million. Most of that is probably salary for Nic and Nicole, but still, the whole thing takes place in like one house. There are next to no special effects, and if this thing took more than a month to shoot then someone needs to be fired. It took in…..$20,000 at the box office. Not $20 million. $20 THOUSAND. And it took just 11 days to get pooped out onto DVD.
The podcast covers a lot of my thoughts, but some of my favorite:
-Crackhead girl from My Boys. WTF. The idea is for them to bust in, steal cash and/or diamonds, and get out. So the first thing she does is start trying on dresses, watching home movies, and smoking crack in the bedroom. THIS IS MADNESS.
-Nic cage had a few awesome freak out moments. For the most part he was chill, but there were times, oh my goodness, true Cage shines through.
-The audience is never let in on the secret. We are simply told things that we really have no choice but to believe are ture, and every 10 mintues, SURPRISE, everything you know is wrong and here is the truth. Except 10 minutes later, SURPRISE, that was a lie too. This continues until about 5 mintues before it’s over, you really never have any idea what’s actually going on.
-The daughter is a terrible actress. She’s young, maybe she’ll get better, or maybe Joel is not good with kids, or maybe the script was so bad she couldn’t do anything with it. I’d wager it’s more those last two things than her being a bad actress.
-I said this before but I’ll say it again, it was actually not an awful movie, and at times was quite entertaining just because you have no idea where they’re going and at any moment there could be a Nic Cage Craziness Explosion. That’s the kind of suspense I love.
Makes me want to never eat meat again. I won’t follow through with that, but I’m glad I watched this. All the links between animal protein consumption and cancer are hard to forget. I’m not sure if I trust it 100% though, it’s very easy to manipulate data and start saying “causation” instead of “correlation” when we all know that they are very much not the same thing. Even so, there is little downside to an animal-free diet, and the price is right. It’s just so damn hard to give up bacon.
A decent concept poorly executed. Much of the movie was actually alright, but the ending was unforgivably terrible and the acting was some of the worst I’ve ever seen. The story was alright, but how the hell did this guy put together these connections? Whatever, don’t care.
Not terrible, I’ll give it that. It was certainly ridiculous, but some things actually worked. Kutcher is pretty charming, and Heigl was surprisingly tolerable. Except all the damn screaming, good lord I wanted to sew her mouth shut. As illogical and sill as everything was, I just started to look at it as if it were a cartoon and that made everything ok. Lots of good actors in smaller parts.
Why was the mom drunk all the time? Was it supposed to be funny? Or did I miss something? Usually they throw in the alcoholic angle because of a tragic character or to highlight generally bad life, but she didn’t have that. Whatevs.
This had been sitting on my DVD queue for months, never quite making it to the top, so imagine my delight when I saw that it was available instantly! It was really good. I can’t believe it wasn’t even nominated for best documentary, it deserved at least that. At times it plays out like a real life This Is Spinal Tap, but really it’s about two best friends chasing their dream. It’s a heartbreaking and inspiring story. Watching them play in front of such small crowds when they expected thousands is tough. At the end you get a moment of glory, as they are booked at a metal festival in Japan, only to find out they are the 11 AM opening act, but their fans still turn out in droves, packing the floor, chanting ANVIL ANVIL. Everything was put together very well, each scene flowed seamlessly into the next and it kept a solid narrative going.
This is exactly the kind of movie that makes me happy to have Netflix Instant. I would probably never bother getting this as a DVD in the mail, but when I’m sitting on the couch with nothing to do for an hour or two, I don’t mind taking a chance on a potentially lame movie. I was not disappointed by this one. It’s Chris Walken in a con-man movie, what’s not to love? It had a good father/son story, lots of good cons, and a decent supporting cast. Sure the story was predictable, but it was fun to watch, so I was happy with it.
My first Uwe Boll experience (I think?) and it wasn’t a terrible one. I watched this because of an article I saw on HD Digest about “Good Movies From Bad Directors”. One of the columnists cited Rampage as a decent little flick from a notoriously terrible director. It wasn’t great, but it was a fun watch just to see how far he’d go. It’s not exactly fun to watch hundreds of innocent civilians being mowed down in a semi-realistic way, but looking at it as a movie that exists solely to push boundaries I respect it. By the time he entered the bingo hall I was rooting for him, actually laughing and saying to the screen “Seriously? Come on!” when he walked out without firing a shot. I am so desensitized. Early in his rampage I was thinking “shit, this is too much, why am I watching this?” but then it just kept going and I got used to it, it almost felt like a cartoon.
It’s a pretty fucked up movie that exists for shock value purposes. The main character goes on about how there are too many people and that this is an exercise in population control (and bank robbery). There are probably tons of people out there crazy enough to do this, and that’s a bit scary.
How did I not see this before? I thought it looked stupid, but last week I saw that it was on Netflix and decided to give it a try, in large part because of a very old but very enthusiastic recommendation from Hags. I’m glad I finally gave it a chance, it was hilarious. And there are so many recognizable faces! Though had I watched this 10 years ago that wouldn’t have been the case, so perhaps it’s good I waited. As a kid I had seen tons of these summer camp movies, and while this wasn’t a direct parody of anything (I don’t think it was?) it hit on all the genre conventions. Very well written and acted. And Archer is a can of vegetables.
