15 posts tagged “five thumbs”
The film is, as the title suggests, told from several different vantage points. The problem is, however, that there's not a whole lot of point in it. The plot isn't all that complicated and it isn't as if each retelling of the first 15 minutes of the film is all that different. To top it off, at the end of each retelling they do an irritating rewinding of the film. As if we were too dumb to realize what was going on -- especially when they then put up a black screen and tell us what time it is. Which brings up another problem: the first time they rewind things they say "X minutes ago" but the rest of the time they show the time. You would think that someone would have said, "Maybe we should have some consistency in the way we do this?"
Despite this, the film is pretty entertaining. The President is shot and the plot surrounds the attempt to figure out what is going on. If the commercials hadn't given away a big twist the film would have been much more interesting but still it is interesting to try to figure out how they are going to save the President. This is also another one of the problems of the film: the film is a lot better once the flashbacks are done with. Especially since the flashbacks all pretty much take place in the same location so we are forced to hear a mayor give the same speech over and over.
Forest Whitaker plays the everyman and adds a bit of working man street-level view to the film. He does a pretty good job but the part is hurt by him happening to intersect with all the characters at the most climactic moment. It is just a bit too coincidental. They could have played this a bit more for laughs or something and made his part more useful. Similarly, Sigourney Weaver is all over the commercials but her part is pretty small. I would have liked to have seen more with her and I would bet that there's a few scenes of her on the cutting room floor. Of course that would have added even more flashbacks to the film.
If there was more variety to the flashbacks, or even a reason for them to really be there it would have been much better. If they would have been more subjective it would have been more interesting as well. Perhaps it could have been told by the people after-the-fact or something but that would have changed the ending.
five thumbs up
Needs more Sigourney
A kid ruins everything
I hate kids so much...
Probably not though.
I did love it though.
Why?
Because it is horrible and preachy and thinks everyone who disagrees with its message is just ignorant.
OK, so this is another Christian movie. The premise of this one is that in the 1890s a guy writes a book that at one point includes a line that implies that although Jesus is great, it is still good for people to do good things even if they don't do them because Jesus told them to do it. One of the author's college strongly disagrees and says that even if you are the best person on the planet you will still go to Hell if you don't worship Jesus. So right off the bat you know this is going to be good. Nothing like saying that people like Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, and the billions of people who never even heard of Jesus are in Hell or going to Hell for the foundation of a good family film...
So the guy who opposes the book claims that implying that you can be a good person without worshiping Jesus just happens to have built a time machine that he uses to send the author into the modern era. Once the author gets to the modern era the real fun begins. We are told that secular film and television are tools of the devil, that if science contradicts the Bible it is the Bible that must be wrong, that manikins wearing revealing clothing will make men horny, that television showing people kissing is corrupting society, and that modern society is just as evil as the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Of course, like all good Christian films such as the Left Behind films and the films just like the Left Behind films that were made by the same people who made the Left Behind films, this film also treats everyone who isn't a devout Christian as just ignorant and in one case not even knowing who this Jesus guy was.
Now to be fair, the film is also hyper-critical of Christians who aren't devout enough. It has a scene where the Church group goes to a movie and the guy freaks out when someone takes the Lord's name in vain. He is dismayed that not everyone in the church is beating down the doors trying to convert everyone else, and looks down its nose at churches that have things like golf leagues and take kids to theme parks.
At some point I was wondering, "OK, these are the opinions of this guy from the 1890s. So maybe the filmmaker doesn't want us to take everything the character says as being what the filmmaker things we should do. Maybe I'm supposed to find the character's opinions as over-the-top as I do." But I don't really see any evidence of that.
five thumbs up
So over the top
its the best thing ever seen
if you're blasphemous
Right off the bat let me clarify something: This is not a movie about a dog that wins a million dollars. It is about a kid who grew up in the slums of India got on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in order to get the attention of the woman his loved. It won best picture but the film has a lot of problems.
I like Danny Boyle films a lot. I liked Trainspotting, I liked Sunshine, and I loved 28 Days Later. This is a Danny Boyle film and it shows. I don't know what it is but watching this film I can just tell that Boyle made it.
One of the problems is that the main character just happened to know all the answers because of these events that happened in his life. What stretches credibility even more is that the questions just happen to be asked in the order that the events in his life happened.
Now I understand that it would have made the film a lot more confusing if question number 1 was about something that happened when he was ten but question number 2 was something that happened when he was 5 and question number 3 was when he was 16 but it still stretches credibility. That being said, it doesn't really matter. It is told in an entertaining way and it is pretty engrossing learning how he got from his childhood to where he is now.
The main problem, and one that I find much harder to ignore is the role of the girl, Latika. Throughout the film we see her as little more than a passive victim. She doesn't do much of anything except be victimized by the poverty and situations she finds herself born into. While the main character and his brother find their way to work out of poverty through their own cleverness and determination, Latika doesn't do anything. When the boys escape from a bad man and the older brother leaves her behind, she just stops running and is captured. When the boys escape from a riot, she needs one of the boys to tell her to run too. When it starts to pour down raining the boys find shelter and she stands in the rain until the main character lets her in the shelter. When someone wants to have sex with her the main character resists and she submits. Latika has no agency and it is really sad to see such a character in a modern film. They couldn't even have her give the main character the winning answer on the game show (of course I know that it would change the ending but still it would have been a valid choice). It is her lack of agency that really almost ruins the film for me.
five thumbs up
got no agency
digital is for the win
no rich dogs in this
Three cute Asian women kicking ass? What's not to like?
So the story, as if there needs to be more than cute Asian women kicking ass is that two of them are sisters who are high tech assassins. One does the killing in dramatic and exciting martial arts ways and the other monitors everything by hacking into the computer systems and monitoring everything. The third woman is the cop who is trying to arrest them. Would you be surprised if it the assassins have hearts of gold and all three of them end up working together? Well if not, the be prepared to be surprised because even though the assassins do have hearts of gold only one of them teams up with the cop. No cliches here!
The action is pretty good. There is some good kung fu action especially by the older sister and the cop. When the younger sister has to take over it is obvious that the actress isn't as athletic as the other two and there is some wire-fu that doesn't work within the world of the movie. There's also a pretty entertaining car chase where one sister has to use satellite imagery to guide the car while also taking out some bad guys attacking her house.
five thumbs up
Love the kick ass chicks
ok, I just like kicking
pretty girls help too
This movie is blatant false advertising. This film is not about elves at all. It is about an elf. Singular. There is only one elf in this movie. On the other hand, however, it does have Dan Haggerty. That's right. Grizzly Adams vs. and evil Elf.
So there's this very 80s girl (although the film came out in 1990 it is super ultra 80s in look and style) who lives with her mean mom and kindly grandfather. She hates Christmas and so her and her friends do some sort of anti-Christmas ritual in the woods releasing an evil elf that looks like and for half the film is referred to as a troll. She works in a store and Grizzly Adams used to work there but was fired for some reason. The store Santa gets killed (by the elf) and they let Grizzly take over. The girls have a party with some boys in the store after hours and the elf kills some people. Then Grizzly Adams dons his detective hat and figures out what this elf thing is about.
This is the point when it turns really weird. See, it turns out that the Nazis were researching elves to use as some sort of ruthless killing machine/ultimate soldier. So it isn't just Grizzly Adams vs. an evil elf, but rather Grizzly Adams vs a Nazi elf! Now how much would you pay??? What if I told you that the elf was a guy in a rubber mask and that the rubber mask had its mouth permanently held open? Now what if I told you that there was also incest? Finally what if I told you that at one point they steal George Romero's line about "When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth" and replace "the dead" with elves? Seriously.
five thumbs up
only one elf here
but there is never enough
for Grizzly Adams
I can, that's who! The crux of this movie is that people are freaked out by killer kids and can't kill them. If I was attacked by a group of killer children I would certainly kick their asses. In fact, I happen to know for a fact that I could could take 28 five year olds in a fight.
However, the adults in this film aren't so lucky if only because there are way more than 28 kids and nearly all of them are over 5 years old.
The movie starts off with a montage of newsreel clips showing real atrocities that have been committed against around the world. From WWII to African genocide there are some reminders of how horrible people can be. I suppose that the film is trying to make a statement about how children are treated in war and to show that in the real world there are those who have no problem killing children. However, it is really too long and the first time I sat through it I turned it off.
I'm glad I did give it a second chance because the film is pretty darn good. It has a British husband and pregnant wife touring a Spanish-speaking country (I couldn't figure out if it was Spain or Mexico or some other South American country) who are going to go to a rustic island a couple miles off the coast. Once there the film goes straight into Children of the Corn territory -- even though this film was made years before that one and was released near the time when the short story was written. They get to the island and can't find any adults. Of course they soon find that the kids have killed every one. Then they have to try to get away.
Some have criticized the fact that they never explain why the kids went evil and there is a scene where an evil kid stares into the eyes of a normal kid and the normal kid turns evil. I, however, didn't find this to be a problem because it really doesn't matter. Without some sort of opportunity to cure the kids or prevent other kids from turning evil there is no reason why we need to know the reason. This film is really Night of the Living Dead with kids instead of zombies complete with some Gustav Vigeland-style kid fighting and an ending with some similarities to Night.
The film isn't perfect. The woman not only doesn't know Spanish (everyone but the husband and wife speak Spanish) but perhaps because she is pregnant is totally helpless. There is a part where a kid has a gun pointed at her head and is smiling and so the husband has to kill the kid and the wife just freaks out about it. That combined with the actress's horrible overacting was a major strike against the film.
However, the smiles on the kid's faces as they kill people and the scenes of them merrily playing (and the knowledge that the director just said, "Go out there and play, kids") which are then juxtaposed with them playing with the dead bodies is pretty chilling. There's also a great scene where the kids come up over a hill and you see that the adult is just screwed is also really excellent. The film isn't really scary and there aren't any real scenes to make you jump but it did slowly draw me in and the end of it is great and draws more parallels with the zombie movie genre which always makes me happy.
five thumbs up
I can kill a child
but not that I really would
unless they were bad.
Like a lot of people I have a huge tv-crush on Jenna Fischer's character Pam from The Office. She's dreamy. Like a few people I love Troma films. Now imagine my delight when I find a Troma film starring, written by, and directed by Jenna Fischer. The only thing that could make it better was if she had made a zombie film...
While a Fischer Zombie film is yet to materialize this film is pretty entertaining not only because it is a Troma film and not only because you get to see another side of Fischer (and the bonus footage allow you to see that she seems almost as cool as Pan) but because it is a mocumentary that makes fun of self-serving people who set up lame charities.
Fischer stars as Jenna and Fischer's husband James Gunn stars as the husband James. They are fairly well off (we never learn exactly what either of them do for a living or where their money comes from) and decide to create a charity to help someone. Told in the typical documentary style we learn through a series of interviews, archival footage (which includes Fischer and Gunn's actual wedding video), and filming of scenes as they are allegedly happening, we learn that the main characters have decided to create a charity to help the homeless -- by giving them lollipops.
The film is basically a series of sketches as they try to get funding and we hear Fischer getting rejected and called horrible things by people on the phone, they hit up their famous friends, put on a presentation for a potential investor, try to create the artwork for the lollipop wrappers, deal with the stress it puts on their marriage, and, near the end, give the suckers to homeless people as a local tv reporter does a story on them. Some of the scenes are more funny than others but there is a lot of fun stuff here.
This was made before Fischer got the gig on The Office but oddly the documentary style is quite reminiscent of The Office and although her character is different there are quite a few scenes where we see Fischer cultivating that look of listening that she often has to have while listening to someone on the Office.
five thumbs up
lollipops are good
but probably not the best
way to help homeless
Another movie I saw as a kid. Remember back when Disney made movies with adults in them that weren't wacky comedies? Never Cry Wolf, Tron, the Black Hole. I know it isn't Cinderella 3 or some crap but they were pretty good movies.
Never Cry Wolf is based on a true story -- although allegedly the book it was based on wasn't 100% true. Regardless, the story is that the caribou herds are diminishing and Tyler, our main character, is sent up to the arctic to try and find out if it is because wolves are killing them.
He's totally unprepared. He's no "Survivorman." He almost dies but is saved by an Inuit. It gets warmer and he starts to study the wolves. He finds out that they eat mice and only kill young and diseased caribou.
It is a nice quite film. However, it is a bit preachy. The old Inuit man is shown as being almost mystical and in tune with the earth in a pretty stereotypical way. The wolves he studies end up getting shot even though wikipedia says it doesn't happen in the book. There is some mention that the land he has been on is going to be developed into some sort of resort which also didn't supposedly happen. Yawn. Despite that, it is a pretty good film.
five thumbs up.
Mickey ain't in this.
Don't make 'em like this no more
To live he eats mice
Because the original book came out in 1902 they wisely decided to start the film in what was then the present day. The film starts with a group of astronauts landing on the moon and putting up a flag. they walk around and what should they find? An old British flag and a letter talking about Queen Victoria. It seems that someone had beaten them to the moon by several decades!
We cut back to Earth where scientists and reporters attempt to track down the people mentioned in the letter. Unfortunately, one is dead and another has been missing since the time of when the letter was written. Finally, they find the lone survivor. It turns out that he has been writing the space agency for years telling them not to go to the moon. Everyone thought he was crazy but now they learn that they should have listened to him because he had been to the moon. At this point, as the man begins to tell the story of his journey, we flash back to the turn of the century where we see the story of the "First Men in the Moon" as it happened. It turns out that not only is the moon inhabited but it is also hollow. Once we see the reason why man shouldn't return to the moon the film goes back to the astronauts then on the moon. The film concludes with a brief rundown of what happened to the inhabitants of the moon.
Overall it is a fun, if a bit low key, film that is a nice example of scifi movies before Star Wars and the Alien films.
five thumbs up
The men in the moon
are not green and are not small
but there's lots of cheese.
The story is told in a way that there are numerous flashbacks and hallucinations which I guess are supposed to make the viewer intrigued about what exactly is going on but it is such a lame story it is pretty obvious what is going on.
Basically a man wakes up and finds the world deserted. He wanders around and eventually finds a couple people outside of a church. One wants him to go in, the other doesn't. One of the series of flashbacks is of what is supposed to be an angel or something. What it really looks like, however, is a guy in a plastic suit with a plastic mask that doesn't even have a moving mouth. The angle eventually shows up at the church. Another of the series of flashbacks is of the main character and his wife. There is lots of sad music and we see scenes of the wife in various stages of pregnancy. Gee, sad music and a pregnant wife, I wonder what happened to her...? A final series of flashbacks is of the main character sad and apparently contemplating shooting himself. Gee, I wonder why? Gee, I wonder what is this whole deserted world and whether or not to go into the church is all about...?
If you have read that and can't figure out the end, well I'm not going to tell you. You will have to sit through this horrible movie for yourself to find out.
five thumbs down.
stupid gold angel
don't bother talking to him.
his mouth doesn't move.
