Your friend in the movie business

I’ve seen quite a few movies lately but because a couple of them defy any reviews that could be written and because I’m a bit lazy right now, I’m simply going to give a score and a short summary behind the score.  That way, I don’t feel like a douschebag for trying to attach a score to The Dark Knight.

Pineapple Express- If you’re going to go over the top, you’d best fucking go over the top.  Pineapple Express shows us this.  Most people are going into this movie assuming that it is a “stoner flick” in the sense that to enjoy it you should be baked.  This is not true.  It is a movie about high individuals, not for them.  Due to clever dialogue throughout the film, it is better viewed with a clear comprehension of what’s going on.  Great movie.  Superbly over-the-top.

Overall 9/10

Tropic Thunder- Not as entertaining as Pineapple Express but still very entertaining.  Robert Downy Jr. completely steals the spotlight from Ben Stiller… which is fine by me.  A very quotable movie.  I foresee teenagers crying out, “I’M A LEAD FARMER, MUTHAFUCKA!” and “You don’t never go full retard” for years to come.  Ben Stiller was definitely great, if not on par with RDjr.  Jack Black was fairly annoying but did at least have one premium line while tied to a tree while undergoing heroine withdrawals.  Great cast, good movie.

Overall 8/10

The Dark Knight- Yeah.  Believe me, I know.  Reviewing this movie is on par with speculation that Bill Gates is in fact wealthy.  You all know what I’m going to say.  I won’t say it’s my favorite movie ever because it hasn’t had a chance to prove it’s long-term re-playability.  But it’s easily in the top 5.

Overall 10/10

Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2- I was forced under threat of death to go see this movie, I swear.  Anyway, all in all a pretty good movie.  Being a 21-year-old straight male, I’m not exactly the demographic they had in mind.  But while I can’t necessarily relate to estrogen-based humor, I can understand it, and for the most part it was funny.  Waaaay too many emotions in the movie though.  Somebody tell those women to chill the fuck out.

Overall 6.7/10 (I couldn’t really decide between 6 and 7).

Wall-E- Did I already review this?  I can’t remember.  Oh well.  My favorite Pixar movie to-date.  Animation was even better than their usual superb quality, characters were excruciatingly lovable, great story and setting… and as if Pixar needed to prove their brilliance, they pulled most of it off without dialogue!

Overall 10/10

I need to stop writing reviews when I’m tired… I refuse to go back and fix bad writing when my eyes are drooping.

Let me start out by mentioning that I had a very serious tooth-ache while attending this musical film.  Infact, I am still under the effects of said tooth-ache along with a consistent 800mg dose of ibprofin every 5 hours and a head cold.  I am not a happy camper.  Did this cause me to have a lean when considering the pro’s and con’s of said movie?  Very likely, yes.  So when reading this review, first imagine that you can’t breath, your nose is dribbling, your mouth is dry, your brain wooley, your tooth hurts like a bitch and to top it all off, you’ve been on a lot of drugs for the last week.  See there?  Now you see where I’m coming from and can once more appreciate the brilliance of my review of “Mamma Mia: Sex and the City for 12 year old girls”.

Now, I’m sure this movie seemed like a very lucrative idea at it’s conception.  Sex and the City + High School Musical = $$$, right?  Rule #1 filmmakers… don’t mix your demographics.  Try to please everybody and you’ll end up with everyone hating you.  This movie relates to Sex and the City by trying to pull off the same brand of “female perspective”.  Men are merely distracting nuisances that you may deign to notice if you’re feeling generous.  Like a dog… or children.  The funny part however is that the women are portrayed as borderline retarded, all of which couldn’t make a rational decision if their lives depended on it.  I suppose if you’re going to be sexist, you might as well go both ways.

As for HIgh School Musical, it’s not only the musical portion of it that I’m thinking of but more the cheesey, picturesque element incorporated into the musical.  Because everyone knows that in Greece, all men look like Brad Pitt without spending a second inside a gym and all women have D-cups with perfectly flat stomachs and absolutely refuse to wear bra’s until they’re 40.  Most modern film-makers have figured out that lead characters need small physical flaws to make them stand out against the extras; make them memorable.  Apparently the memo wasn’t sent out before casting however and now I can’t remember the lead’s face, nor that of the supporting groom.  The only faces I do remember are those of the six 40-50 year-old characters.

This movie was terribly produced.  I have a mind to look up who did produce it and keep a safe distance so as not to catch his sickly amount of fail.  A midnight opening the same night as The Dark Knight?!  I have a hard time believing that anyone actually went to see this movie the entire opening weekend with such an obviously superior alternative.  It doesn’t even matter if you chose your opening night first.  The Dark Knight gets dibs, you change yours accordingly.  You just can’t compete with that and trying to is a surefire way to make everyone forget about your movie before they hear about it.  Also, where was the advertisement?  I saw no tv ads, no theatrical trailers, certainly no viral marketing.  The only posters up at all were inside the theaters and completely overshadowed by far larger posters for Tropical Thunder and The Dark Knight.  I wouldn’t have known that this movie existed if not for my friend’s unexplainable excitement toward it.

I hated the singing.  Normally I don’t mind -or even enjoy- musicals.  The problem with Mamma Mia was that nothing at all was accomplished by the songs.  They would have normal dialogue propel the plot forward with a line and then simply reiterate that single line over and over again for 10 minutes.  Then one more line of dialogue and 10 more minutes repeating that line in the form of a song.  I found myself dreading the start of each new song because they all took so long and they all meant absolutely nothing.

The actors were mediocre on all accounts, the writing cliche and cheesey, the setting unrealistic, the premise was pointless, the goal of the plot was undertermined, the characters were vapid and MY TOOTH REALLY HURTS!

To the film’s credit, it had some beautiful cinemotography.  Given a similar beach in Greece I probably could’ve accomplished the same with a disposible kodak, but hey, whose judging?

Writing- 4

Performance – 7

Technical – 3 (I just can’t get over that terrible producing)

Overall – 4 out of 10

I find it amusing that apparently every single person in the U.S. has such a passionate, unwavering opinion about global warming, one way or the other.

The simple truth is that man-made influences on the climate are theories. Could they be right? Certainly! Could they be wrong? Yes. Everyone needs to stop acting like motherfucking pricks because you have access to super-secret confidential high-toxin bar-graphs and “OMG 76 thousand scientists agree with you!” You know what that statement means, by the way? It means that 1 or 2 scientists came up with a theory or counter-theory, gave a fuckton of presentations to a bunch of different colleges and told you that every person that attended their lectures agreed with them. And is a scientist. An environmental-specializing scientist.

Absolutely nothing has been proven. This issue is big because some politician (Al Gore you fucknut) found out that scaring people makes votes appear. Then said politician searched around for a doomsday theory mildly believable and made it their campaign slogan. 15 years later, a politician who people give a damn about (not Al Gore) took up the torch and here we are on our precipice of panic.

If the brightest minds in the world in those specific fields don’t fucking agree with each other about global warming, what the fuck do you all have to say about it?

For the sake of space and time, we assume various beliefs to be true, as follows:

-Sin is defined as the absence of God, hence, God cannot sin… Him being God and all.

-Man is imperfect; no exceptions. (Jesus is to be considered a God for the sake of the paper).

-All hierarchies are inherently flawed in some way. (no system is perfect)

-A “true church” would be defined as the manifestation and tool of God’s will on Earth.

-God would not allow the manifestation of his will to be used for evil purposes. Or rather, it being God’s will, evil cannot be born from it, nor could it be used as a tool for evil (see first “belief”).

-Hence, religious hierarchies are man-made and therein imperfect, and therein, a potential tool for evil.

Hence, any law or rule not explicitly given individually to men, from God, cannot be held as doctrine (or a matter of the soul) unless given without the medium of a specific religious organization. If religious organizations are man-made, then God could not give credit to any given organization by giving them exclusive religious insight without causing his message to eventually be warped and potentially abused by the mortal hands of man.

Hence it is my belief that if God did give man rules to abide by, they are those held consistent throughout the various religions around the world (given broadly so as not to give any one organization the power to distort): compassion, a sense to preserve life, honest dealings (all those things that ultimately lead to ideal communities and a solid social structure).

Anything more specific I believe to be the workings of said individual organizations seeing as the majority of these beliefs do not carry across cultures/religions. Hence, not real matters of the soul, nor rules given to us by God, but rather, by other men.

In conclusion, why would you trust another man to tell you what God is saying? Too much power is given to men/organizations in that single act. Once you give them your full trust, your life is no longer yours. If God wants to talk to you, or if you want to talk to God; do so. No man is given abnormal religious attunement superior to any other man, if our beliefs are to be believed.

Instead of finding your religion among man’s creations, find your religion with God, and keep it between God and yourself, lest others think to give you their lives.

I hate the lead role actor in this so much.  He was terrible on an “Alexander” level.  And that’s a terrible feat to accomplish.  If it happens once more in film history, the earth will suck the souls out of all living beings to fill the void of awful directing, casting, and acting.

Angelina Jolie was the single saving grace of this movie.  And she is getting older.  No she’s not “old” but you can tell, even after make-up and editing, that her skin is turning to leather.  Her performance was on par with all of her films(besides Alexander, of course), although not as good as Mr/mrs Smith.

Morgan Freeman apparently didn’t find his character as he didn’t actually act in this movie.  After seeing this, I can’t help but think they paid him 2 million to read lines off the teleprompter.  The only movement he ever actually did was curving the bullet.  Otherwise, he stood there with his hands behind his back the entire fucking time.  More proof that he read his lines.

This wasn’t a mindless action movie either.  Shit, there’s not even any good action scenes.  In fact, the only good scene in the entire damn movie was the 4 frames of Jolie’s ass.  Too much fucking slow-mo(an excuse for filming action sequences because your lead’s so untalented he can’t even tape at a semi-normal speed and make it look good), music changes and the movie’s pace were extremely infrequent and often, making the movie’s rhythm jump around so that you walk out thinking the entire thing took 35 minutes.

The plot was dumb and suffered from a serious case of Star Wars mimicry syndrome(which doubtless was a copy itself, knowing George Lucas).  Inconsistencies threw me off constantly… He can apparently hit a bullet out of mid air, but can’t hit a large target, in the open, at 100 ft and unloaded an entire clip at a guy from 20 ft away without touching him… Right.  And the rats?  In the apparent span of 20 seconds, a bunch of rats manage to scale a castle and insert themselves into every crevice.  And what, because he released a bunch of rats, everyone stopped shooting?  Oh noes, we’re doomed!  Add to the fact that his big ass rat plan amounted to jack shit as it didn’t seem to actually kill anyone or destroy anything at all…

I could go on, but I’ll end my review.  You get the point.

Writing – 6

Performance – 5

Technical – 6

Overall – 6

Starting with Darjeeling Limtied, I like this movie.  It’s humor is more subtle than usual and often a little cynical or bitter but very amusing.  It’s extremely abrupt which plays a major role in making the film fun.  Other than that… I dunno what to say about this one.  It had a way of making you feel smart that you “got it” and, while Juno did the same thing, Darjeeling Limited did it in an entirely different way. That’s what I can say about this movie; it’s unique.  Not only in story and setting and manner, but it’s entire tone and even genre were undefined!  With so many films out each year and with such hard-set rules most film makers abide by, it’s an almost impossible feat to make an entirely unique one.  For that alone this film can be called nothing short of brilliant.

Hrm, turns out this is my first real film review… there’s way too many aspects of film to judge, so I’ll try to categorize the best I can.  Also, in parenthesis, I’ll include examples of what that category includes.

Writing(IE: story, dialogue etc): 9

Performance(includes the actors and directors): 9

Technical(Editing, cinematography, producing etc): 9

Overall: 9

Cloverfield… Hmm.  This movie was obviously an experiment.  The most obvious aspect of the “experiment” is the camera view; that being the view of a homemade video tape from start to finish.  I dunno, I liked this movie.  Some parts were annoying (camera view and the character holding it) but it was so intentionally built to focus on this tiny side-story of the 4-5 main characters while this epic battle for New York City vs some gigantic mutant mystery monster was largely ignored beyond being the catalyst.  Nothing concerning the larger story was ever explained and I believe that’s how the director (J.J. Abrams btw) wanted it.  He wanted us to feel like the characters.  Lost and confused.  No audience insider secrets here; we only know what the cameraman knows.  As far as that goes; very well done.  I can’t honestly say that I’d look forward to seeing that type of camera work done again any time soon though.

This one is hard to grade… because even though some things about the movie might have sucked, I can’t help but believe that every single feeling and aspect about that movie was 100% intended by J.J. Abrams.  Even the shitty parts like bad dialogue or an overly prolonged intro.  So how do you judge flaws that were completely intended?  Ugh.  Whatever, I’ll do this by pure opinion.

Writing: 7

Performance: 9  (sometimes annoying but always very believable)

Technical:  6, I guess.  Experimentation does not mean it was good.

Overall: 7