Hi out there,
After a crazy fall quarter, I really want to get back to writing regularly. And this blog is a great place to get started again. And rather than trying to get all caught up on everything I missed, I'm going to start with where I am right now.
I had one of the laziest days that I've allowed myself to have in probably five months. I slept in until noon, made some lunch, watched football, and just chilled on the couch for most of the day. After getting a pizza from Toto's (the best thin crust traditional pizza in the bay area), I sat down to watch a couple movies. It turns out that I haven't watched any of my Netflix movies in the last couple of months, so after a quick search, I decided to watch Prizzi's Honor and The Woodsman, saving Sicko for another time.
Both movies were good and worth watching. I'll start with Prizzi's Honor.
Prizzi's Honor was a 1985 film starring Jack Nicholson (nominated for best actor), Anjelica Huston (won best supporting actress), and Kathleen Turner and was directed by John Huston. It was nominated for Best Picture (along with Witness, The Color Purple, Kiss of the Spider Woman, and the winner: Out of Africa).
The movie tells the fictional story of the Prizzi crime family. They're an aging mob family that is starting to lose control over all their operations. Jack Nicholson is the don's godson and he and his father are two of the most trusted members of the operation. In one of the quickest romances of all time, Jack Nicholson falls in love with Kathleen Turner after some eye-contact and a dance for half a song during a wedding. At different points each of them is contracted to kill the other.
The story itself is pretty cool. Even with 15 minutes left in the film, I had no idea how everything was going to turn out. And I liked how everything was resolved. My only issue with the movie was that it didn't seem to ever decide if it was a serious movie or a comedy. Jack Nicholson wasn't the most convincing crime lord, but Angelica Huston and Kathleen Turner both turned in pretty good performances.
The Woodsman was a very different movie. It came out in 2004 and starts Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgewick, Eve, Mos Def, Benjamin Bratt, and David Alan Grier. It was produced by Lee Daniels (who also did Monster's Ball and Precious). This movie flew under the radar and now that I've seen it, I know why. It is a heavy drama about a taboo topic, but it is very well done.
The Woodsman follows the life of Kevin Bacon, a 45 year-old sex offender who is out of jail on parole. He is trying to lead a normal life despite being estranged by his family and battling his own demons including his continued affinity for young girls. Kyra Sedgewick starts a romance with him despite his efforts to keep her (and everyone) at arm's length. He must confront all of the predictable aspects of being a registered sex offender (confessing to his girlfriend, running into kids in public, having people at work find out, dealing with a parole officer). Kevin Bacon portrays this role with incredible depth, self-doubt, self-loathing, and delicate hope. The movie was difficult to watch at times. Because it was trying so hard to depict this issue realistically, it doesn't have a happy, feel-good sentiment about it. Despite the fact that I probably won't watch this more than once, I highly recommend this movie to everyone.
Showing posts with label movie review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie review. Show all posts
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Monday, May 31, 2010
Mansquito and Supergator
You probably don't need to know any of what I'm about to post.
The Syfy Channel has been a good source of science fiction shows and movies over the last few years. Every so often, I'll be flipping through channels (late at night) and will page my way to Channel 71 just to see what's playing. I've caught reruns of The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as some good movies. They also have all sorts of Stargate stuff, Ghost Hunters, and Scare Tactics (hosted by Tracy Morgan) which seems like it would be a 30 Rock spinoff show. All in all, if you like you some sci fi, it's worth checking the Syfy Channel out.
That said, the Syfy Channel has been giving us some EXCEPTIONALLY bad content that no one knows about. They have some good movies and then they have some movies that feel like they were practical jokes played by college film students.
Let me present you with two pieces of evidence:
(and WATCH these clips - they are UNFREAKINGREAL and very very funny)
Exhibit A: Mansquito
The premise of Mansquito is that doctors are trying to develop a cure for a virus related to the West Nile virus (I think it's called the Gillian virus and who knows why that is). They discover that when given a small dose of radiation, the cure works, but apparently too much radiation is really bad. Anyway, they need to test this on humans, so the research leader brings in death row inmates to test on them. There was the following exchange:
Cop: Is this legal?
Research Dude: Yes. All the lawyers have signed off on it.
Anyway, there is laughably little security when transferring the inmate to the lab and he manages to get away, take a hostage and get doused with radiation and cure. He then quickly turns into a man-sized mosquito and starts draining the blood of his victims. I don't want to ruin the end for you... ok who am I kidding - we couldn't bear to watch until the end. Think District 9 with 1/100th the special effects budget and 1/10000th of the plot.
Exhibit B: Supergator
Look, I wasn't going to watch this at all, but then in the info bar, it showed that Kelly McGillis was in it. YES, THAT Kelly McGillis. The one who played opposite Tom Cruise in Top Gun. WTF?
The following is taken from wikipedia: Scott Kinney is an American geologist monitoring a local volcano when the Supergator, a prehistoric alligator recreated from fossilized DNA escapes from a secret bio-engineering research center. Kinney joins forces with another scientist (McGillis) and a Texan alligator hunter. They pursue the moster as it heads down river intent on destroying a luxurious resort packed with tourists.
Oh, I forgot to mention, this all takes place in Hawaii. How could there be a prehistoric alligator in Hawaii? How did it get there? Did it swim across the ocean? Was it carrying all the snakes that ended up on Samuel L. Jackson's plane? I understand that it's low budget, but can you make the movie seem a little bit less like the writers posted a bunch of ideas on a wall and then threw darts to pick which ones to put together.
I watched only the first 15 minutes of the movie (and enough to watch two people get killed!) But no Kelly McGillis. I think a little part of me would have died had I seen her in the movie. As far as I know, it might be another Kelly McGillis.
The Syfy Channel has been a good source of science fiction shows and movies over the last few years. Every so often, I'll be flipping through channels (late at night) and will page my way to Channel 71 just to see what's playing. I've caught reruns of The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as some good movies. They also have all sorts of Stargate stuff, Ghost Hunters, and Scare Tactics (hosted by Tracy Morgan) which seems like it would be a 30 Rock spinoff show. All in all, if you like you some sci fi, it's worth checking the Syfy Channel out.
That said, the Syfy Channel has been giving us some EXCEPTIONALLY bad content that no one knows about. They have some good movies and then they have some movies that feel like they were practical jokes played by college film students.
Let me present you with two pieces of evidence:
(and WATCH these clips - they are UNFREAKINGREAL and very very funny)
Exhibit A: Mansquito
The premise of Mansquito is that doctors are trying to develop a cure for a virus related to the West Nile virus (I think it's called the Gillian virus and who knows why that is). They discover that when given a small dose of radiation, the cure works, but apparently too much radiation is really bad. Anyway, they need to test this on humans, so the research leader brings in death row inmates to test on them. There was the following exchange:
Cop: Is this legal?
Research Dude: Yes. All the lawyers have signed off on it.
Anyway, there is laughably little security when transferring the inmate to the lab and he manages to get away, take a hostage and get doused with radiation and cure. He then quickly turns into a man-sized mosquito and starts draining the blood of his victims. I don't want to ruin the end for you... ok who am I kidding - we couldn't bear to watch until the end. Think District 9 with 1/100th the special effects budget and 1/10000th of the plot.
Exhibit B: Supergator
Look, I wasn't going to watch this at all, but then in the info bar, it showed that Kelly McGillis was in it. YES, THAT Kelly McGillis. The one who played opposite Tom Cruise in Top Gun. WTF?
The following is taken from wikipedia: Scott Kinney is an American geologist monitoring a local volcano when the Supergator, a prehistoric alligator recreated from fossilized DNA escapes from a secret bio-engineering research center. Kinney joins forces with another scientist (McGillis) and a Texan alligator hunter. They pursue the moster as it heads down river intent on destroying a luxurious resort packed with tourists.
Oh, I forgot to mention, this all takes place in Hawaii. How could there be a prehistoric alligator in Hawaii? How did it get there? Did it swim across the ocean? Was it carrying all the snakes that ended up on Samuel L. Jackson's plane? I understand that it's low budget, but can you make the movie seem a little bit less like the writers posted a bunch of ideas on a wall and then threw darts to pick which ones to put together.
I watched only the first 15 minutes of the movie (and enough to watch two people get killed!) But no Kelly McGillis. I think a little part of me would have died had I seen her in the movie. As far as I know, it might be another Kelly McGillis.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Movie Review - Green Zone
As you read below, Green Zone was the first of two movies that I watched last Tuesday afternoon while we theatre-hopped.
Green Zone is yet another movie about the United States continuing conflict in the Middle East and is specifically about the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. It is a pretty intense look at the interaction between the military and the Iraqi people and between the different branches of government/military.
This is a difficult movie to review for a couple reasons. First, I just saw The Hurt Locker a few weeks ago and it was amazingly realistic... that is, not that I've been to Iraq/Afghanistan, but it didn't have any of the over-the-top Hollywood vehicles that plague so many movies. The Hurt Locker just felt clean to me.
Green Zone had a bunch of that going at the start, but then toward the end it became a caricature of itself toward the end. It's like some film producer said, we have to make this MORE dramatic and MORE extraordinary and in doing so, made the movie much weaker than it could have been.
The other reason why this is a difficult movie for me to review is due to my politics and all the stuff I have read about the War in Iraq. I cannot objectively tell if this movie was liberal, right on, or what. What I do know is that most of what was shown in the movie follows from what I read in two books, "Iraq Confidential" by Scott Ritter and "Chain of Command" by Seymour Hersh. Scott Ritter is an ex-Marine who headed up the UN Inspection Teams in Iraq in the search for WMDs. All the evidence that he provided to Clinton and Bush pointed to the fact that no WMDs existed and that the intelligence saying that they did was incorrect. Both Ritter and Hersh explored the relationship between the White House and the CIA, specifically that Bush insisted on looking at the raw intelligence data without allowing for the CIA to utilize experts to analyze the intelligence reports. Many of the Bush policies were based on inaccurate intelligence because of the lack of analysis.
As I re-consider the movie, I don't like that the end of the movie and its over-dramatization took away from the accurate information it was showing earlier in the film. All in all, I thought that the movie was done well. I really liked Matt Damon and the role he played. It just didn't need to be so over-wrought.
Green Zone is yet another movie about the United States continuing conflict in the Middle East and is specifically about the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. It is a pretty intense look at the interaction between the military and the Iraqi people and between the different branches of government/military.
This is a difficult movie to review for a couple reasons. First, I just saw The Hurt Locker a few weeks ago and it was amazingly realistic... that is, not that I've been to Iraq/Afghanistan, but it didn't have any of the over-the-top Hollywood vehicles that plague so many movies. The Hurt Locker just felt clean to me.
Green Zone had a bunch of that going at the start, but then toward the end it became a caricature of itself toward the end. It's like some film producer said, we have to make this MORE dramatic and MORE extraordinary and in doing so, made the movie much weaker than it could have been.
The other reason why this is a difficult movie for me to review is due to my politics and all the stuff I have read about the War in Iraq. I cannot objectively tell if this movie was liberal, right on, or what. What I do know is that most of what was shown in the movie follows from what I read in two books, "Iraq Confidential" by Scott Ritter and "Chain of Command" by Seymour Hersh. Scott Ritter is an ex-Marine who headed up the UN Inspection Teams in Iraq in the search for WMDs. All the evidence that he provided to Clinton and Bush pointed to the fact that no WMDs existed and that the intelligence saying that they did was incorrect. Both Ritter and Hersh explored the relationship between the White House and the CIA, specifically that Bush insisted on looking at the raw intelligence data without allowing for the CIA to utilize experts to analyze the intelligence reports. Many of the Bush policies were based on inaccurate intelligence because of the lack of analysis.
As I re-consider the movie, I don't like that the end of the movie and its over-dramatization took away from the accurate information it was showing earlier in the film. All in all, I thought that the movie was done well. I really liked Matt Damon and the role he played. It just didn't need to be so over-wrought.
Movie Review - Hot Tub Time Machine
Yeah yeah yeah - I know. (mumble...somesortofapologyfornotpostingmorefrequently...mumble)
Last week, Jerrica and I decided to go catch two movies on a Tuesday afternoon in Emeryville. Not that it was illegal, but maybe we paid to go see Green Zone and then after Green Zone went to see this fantastic movie called Hot Tub Time Machine. Interesting note, the theater was not posting the titles of the movies playing in each individual theatre - I had to be resourceful to figure out where HTTM was playing. Luckily the kiosks where you could buy tickets without going to the ticket window list the theatre number before you have to purchase the ticket.
Anyway...
I'll say more about Green Zone later. It was a decent movie, but intense. What we really needed after it was a light, mindless, and funny film. And Hot Tub Time Machine was PERFECT!!
Loosely, the story revolves around three friends who have fallen out of touch (John Cusack, Rob Corddry, and Craig Robinson) and John Cusack's nephew. They get together to re-live old times in a small ski town only to find themselves sucked into 1986 via a hot tub time machine. Then they have to figure out how to get back without changing the future... too much.
If you think you've seen a movie like this before, you probably have. One of the main differences, though, is that this movie is so tongue-in-cheek and self-aware, that it's hard not to be thoroughly entertained by it. The best example of all the liberties they take with logic and physics was one point where something ridiculous is proposed and the response is "oh... that makes sense" as if to justify what the writer's wrote.
When you go see this (skipping this movie is not an option), keep an eye out for the homage to Back to the Future. Crispin Glover (George McFly in BTTF) has a decently sized role in the movie as well. Too bad they couldn't get Huey Lewis and The News to do a song for them. The music and all the 80s references, though, are SPECTACULAR and remind us how bad of a decade it actually was, but in an endearing way.
My recommendation, go see this movie after you've had a long day and just want to blow off some steam and laugh for 90 minutes. Hell, bring some beer with you into the theatre, too.
Last week, Jerrica and I decided to go catch two movies on a Tuesday afternoon in Emeryville. Not that it was illegal, but maybe we paid to go see Green Zone and then after Green Zone went to see this fantastic movie called Hot Tub Time Machine. Interesting note, the theater was not posting the titles of the movies playing in each individual theatre - I had to be resourceful to figure out where HTTM was playing. Luckily the kiosks where you could buy tickets without going to the ticket window list the theatre number before you have to purchase the ticket.
Anyway...
I'll say more about Green Zone later. It was a decent movie, but intense. What we really needed after it was a light, mindless, and funny film. And Hot Tub Time Machine was PERFECT!!
Loosely, the story revolves around three friends who have fallen out of touch (John Cusack, Rob Corddry, and Craig Robinson) and John Cusack's nephew. They get together to re-live old times in a small ski town only to find themselves sucked into 1986 via a hot tub time machine. Then they have to figure out how to get back without changing the future... too much.
If you think you've seen a movie like this before, you probably have. One of the main differences, though, is that this movie is so tongue-in-cheek and self-aware, that it's hard not to be thoroughly entertained by it. The best example of all the liberties they take with logic and physics was one point where something ridiculous is proposed and the response is "oh... that makes sense" as if to justify what the writer's wrote.
When you go see this (skipping this movie is not an option), keep an eye out for the homage to Back to the Future. Crispin Glover (George McFly in BTTF) has a decently sized role in the movie as well. Too bad they couldn't get Huey Lewis and The News to do a song for them. The music and all the 80s references, though, are SPECTACULAR and remind us how bad of a decade it actually was, but in an endearing way.
My recommendation, go see this movie after you've had a long day and just want to blow off some steam and laugh for 90 minutes. Hell, bring some beer with you into the theatre, too.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Movie Review - It's Complicated
On Monday night, Shing and I went to go see It’s Complicated in Berkeley. We actually spent a lot of time weighing the merits of bad yet entertaining action versus comedy (probably with cheese) and more introspection. Complicating things (pun not intended), at least for me, was that Shing refuses to see Shutter Island or The Wolfman. So we found ourselves choosing between Up In The Air, It’s Complicated, From Paris With Love, and The Book of Eli.
As you can guess, we ended up picking It’s Complicated despite it’s obvious chick flick potential. Shing doubted that I actually wanted to see the movie at all, but I tried to explain that I thought it would be funny and that I like Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep, and Steve Martin.
If you haven’t seen the movie, but have seen the previews, there shouldn’t be any real surprises. If you haven’t seen the previews, here’s a quick synopsis. Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin are both very successful people and had been married for 19 years and then divorced. Alec left Meryl for a much younger woman and Meryl is single. When Alec and Meryl’s son graduates, the family comes together and Meryl and Alec start having an affair. This complicates their lives since Alec is married and Meryl just started seeing Steve Martin.
What can I say, the movie was what we expected it to be. There are some scenes in the movie that are very funny. Also, Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep, and Steve Martin were each terrific in their roles. Their characters had depth and realism – they understood themselves and their feelings; they knew that their bodies had lost a bit with age; they knew how to be patient. And this only comes through with very seasoned actors. The younger actors in the movie were disappointing to me – they were very one-dimensional and unbelievable. This left me wishing that the writers had spent as much time developing them as they had the key characters.
It’s definitely a movie worth seeing, but you can wait for Netflix if you haven’t seen it yet.
As you can guess, we ended up picking It’s Complicated despite it’s obvious chick flick potential. Shing doubted that I actually wanted to see the movie at all, but I tried to explain that I thought it would be funny and that I like Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep, and Steve Martin.
If you haven’t seen the movie, but have seen the previews, there shouldn’t be any real surprises. If you haven’t seen the previews, here’s a quick synopsis. Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin are both very successful people and had been married for 19 years and then divorced. Alec left Meryl for a much younger woman and Meryl is single. When Alec and Meryl’s son graduates, the family comes together and Meryl and Alec start having an affair. This complicates their lives since Alec is married and Meryl just started seeing Steve Martin.
What can I say, the movie was what we expected it to be. There are some scenes in the movie that are very funny. Also, Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep, and Steve Martin were each terrific in their roles. Their characters had depth and realism – they understood themselves and their feelings; they knew that their bodies had lost a bit with age; they knew how to be patient. And this only comes through with very seasoned actors. The younger actors in the movie were disappointing to me – they were very one-dimensional and unbelievable. This left me wishing that the writers had spent as much time developing them as they had the key characters.
It’s definitely a movie worth seeing, but you can wait for Netflix if you haven’t seen it yet.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Earlier This Week
I'm faced tonight with a difficult decision of what to watch in the background while I update my blog. The choices are: Warriors basketball, Duke vs Clemson basketball, Predator, Anaconda 3, Predator 2, Bring It On: In It To Win It, Lethal Weapon 2, Click, or Titanic. Predictably, I'm watching a combination of Warriors basketball and Predator. "If it bleeds, we can kill it." Aaaah, I love Ah-nold.
Earlier this week, I got to go up to Tahoe (technically, Soda Springs) for Monday and Tuesday to go boarding at Sugar Bowl. Went with Jon and TC and Judy. Jon is a friend of mine who I've known since 7th grade when he moved here from Texas, TC is his wife, and Judy is a friend of theirs and mine. We left SF early on Monday morning after grabbing some food at The Bagelry and La Boulange (oh my goodness, that was tasty) and drove through rain and snow the entire way up and managed to arrive somewhere around 11:30am. Jon and I headed up to Sugar Bowl and did a half day of boarding. The snow was amazing and there was no one on the mountain. It helped that we were boarding in the middle of a blizzard. The second ride up the lift, a gust of wind came over a ridge that chilled us to the core and blew our seats around a bit. It was about then that I thought we were doing something that wasn't too smart. We got four runs in before getting worried that Jon's car might get snowed in, so we took off. It was a good re-introduction to boarding.
Oh, here are a couple more Predator quotes:
"Bullshit. You ain't afraid of no man."
"There's something out there waiting for us, and it ain't no man."
"We're all gonna die."
We ate a very tasty stew on Monday night and then watched a Korean movie called The Host. Think Cloverfield crossed with Godzilla. It wasn't nearly as scary as it could have been. If you're looking for a good thriller and you are not all that big into horror movie, it would be a good one to watch. It mixes comedy and horror pretty well, but you aren't missing anything if you miss it.
After a leisurely morning, we headed back out to Sugar Bowl on Tuesday and got up to the slopes around noon. Jon, TC, and I went up for a few runs while Judy headed out for her lesson. Since at least a foot of snow was dumped on us overnight, the conditions were fantastic. Plus it just kept on snowing while we were out there. And on a Tuesday, hardly anyone was out there. Aside from the poor visibility and bone-chilling wind gusts, it was perfect. I tried a couple of ollies for the first time ever and managed to ride down the mountain very well on my regular side and also on my switch side. On the last run, I went down without stopping and felt terrific. I am TOTALLY hooked and am looking forward to my next trip up.
OK, gotta run out to a Sinister Dexter show. I'll update again soon. I hope.
"I'm gonna have me some fun."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
