This really wasn’t that bad at all. It was mindless fun, exactly what I needed. The plot is exactly what you see in the trailer, and the end is exactly what you’d except, give or take a highly illogical gold car. All the leads did a good job, even Eddie Murphy. I love a good heist movie. This isn’t exactly that, but it is a heist movie, so it got those bonus points. And really, the gold car aside, it’s a pretty tight script when you look at the heist part. Maybe. I might be forgetting other silly bits. But whatever, it’s not supposed to be great, it’s supposed to be a fun watch, and it was everything it needed to be.
Was I paying enough attention to properly write this one up? No, not really. But I can say this: it was pretty, it had good action, and it was silly (but in a good way). What else can you expect from Paul W.S. Anderson? I thought it would be horrible, and if you think it is I totally support your choice, but I found it to be just the right about of nonsense and action to be utterly enjoyable.
I prepared myself for this to suck, but it surprised me. A crew of mercenaries, murderers, and general badasses (and Topher Grace, but spoiler he’s a murderer too) are dropped on what is presumably either the Predator home planet or just some jungle planet they use to hunt, and then are picked off one by one. You know that only one or two people are going to get out, and it’s easy to predict that it will be Adrien Brody and the chick. I figured this would be the case, with another possibility being that he sacrifices himself at the last minute to helpt he girl escape. She was definitely gonna make it, because this is a movie.
The references to Arnold are what made this really work. Tying in his report of what happened in the 80s lends a huge amount of credibility to this, and gives these characters a reason to not just repeat everything he did. The kills were pretty good for the most part, and while no one did any stellar acting work, they did exactly what was needed for a “Predators Are Gonna Murder Almost Everyone Just Sit Back And Enjoy” movie. Well worth a stop if it’s on TBS.
This was a very fun little action/comedy. Or maybe comedy/action. It was foremost a comedy but had lots of very well done car chases and fights. Anyway, clocking in at under 90 minutes this things gets going right away and doesn’t really slow down at all. Aziz and Eisenberg play off each other quite well, as do Kenny Powers and Nick Swardson. And they didn’t kill the Major, I was pleased to see him in the post credits bit. It’s a perfect time waster kind of movie, well worth 90 minutes but once it was over it started to fade.
Wow I really enjoyed this movie. I have nothing bad to say about it. Every actor was great, it had a good story, good music, good everything. I probably should have seen the “twist” coming but I didn’t, which made it even more enjoyable. Gosling stands out as the highlight of the film, but I don’t want to take away from anyone or anything else, it was one of the best of 2011.
I was pleasantly surprised by this. It had received overwhelmingly good reviews, but I still thought it would be overly schmaltzy and happy and meh. It was those things, except meh. Sandra was pretty awesome, and her little son stood out as well. As did her big adopted son. The script was pretty tight, witty, and flowed perfectly. I didn’t know much about the true story except that he is now in the NFL, so I didn’t really see every bit of it coming. I watched this 2 weeks ago and slacked on the review so I don’t have a ton of details, but I’ll say it was deserving of the attention it received, maybe not a Best Picture nomination, but it was only in there because of the stupid 10 film rule that year.
Machete. Maidens. Unleashed! Really good documentary about the exploitation films of the 60s and 70s in the Philippines. I didn’t realize that they were all shot over there. I haven’t really seen any, just clips and stories about them, but they’re always in the jungle to it makes sense. Some of the details are pretty rough, terrible working conditions, mistreatment of the locals, but they defend it with the “those were the times” argument. Jackie Brown seems like the only actress to make it out of the genre to do anything else of note. And that little dude, Weng Weng! Fucking hilarious.
The last 5 minutes were better than the entire movie before it. The more we know about Captain Jack the less interesting he is. Part 4 was better than 2 and 3, but a far cry from The Curse of the Black Pearl. At least this one was easy to follow, I didn’t fully pay attention for a lot of it but I still understood the basics of what was going on. Blackbeard was good. Depp too, pretty much everyone else was not.
There are few things I hate more in films than when one cannot decide what it wants to be. Is this a straight up horror movie? Horror/Comedy? Thriller/Drama? It’s just all over the place. The general idea is good, a virgin sacrifice gone wrong and now the girl must feast upon flesh to survive, but it’s so inconsistent and the performances are not great that it’s tough to get into it and care at all. Some good scares and gore, but overall it’s just a mess.
It’s over? Maybe, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another one. The story here is, well, unimportant. People are caught in traps, that’s really all that matters. Mr. Boondock Saint pretended to be a Jigsaw survivor so of course he was then put through a series of tests. I honestly don’t remember if he lived in the end, I think he made it. And the return of Dr. Gordon was welcome, if nonsensical. It’s always nice when this series comes back to the first installment, the only one I would consider to be a truly good movie. I guess it’s best that they didn’t come back to the bathroom each time, that would have been a bit much, but to close the series with the first movie’s victim locking up who was supposed to be Jigsaw’s successor in the bathroom without a saw is a fitting end, and to have any more movies would mean making Dr. Gordon the new Jigsaw, which is fine, but it probably won’t happen.
For a cheap horror series they really kept up with the continuity, each movie continues the overall story and you do need to know what happened in the last one to make sense of the next one. They’re enjoyable enough as torture porn if you don’t know the story, but it would just be so boring. They still kind of are, but whatever, I had invested enough time in the series that I was curious to see how it all ended. And I’m glad it’s over.
