18 posts tagged “four thumbs”
The storyline of the film is that humans polluted the planet and left it while an army of little robots gathers up all the junk. At the start of the film only one of these WALL-E units seems to be left alive and it is our hero. One day a rocket lands and out comes a fancier new robot. This EVE robot and WALL-E bond. The rocket comes to take back EVE and WALL-E hitches along and encounters what has become of humanity.
One of the weirdest things about the film is that WALL-E is basically a STALK-R. EVE doesn't want all that much to do with him at first. He just keeps following her around and even when he follows her to the humans she doesn't even know about it. Of course in the end they fall in love which sends the message that you just need to keep bothering a woman until they give in no matter how much they tell you that they aren't interested in you.
There is also the matter of the depiction of the humans in the film. For one thing, there are live action people shown in historic video clips from the company that built the ships for escaping Earth. However, the humans that WALL-E meets are computer generated. I guess that they were trying to draw a line between the normal people of the past and the obese people of the films setting but I'm not at all sure that it works well.
The obese nature of the people is also kind of weird as well. I'm not really sure what the message about them is supposed to be. I guess that it is some sort of message about consumerism, mediated societies and sedentary lifestyles but the message is muddied by the fact that aside from obesity there really isn't much of a downside to their lifestyle. Everything on the ship is well run, and everyone seems happy, nice, and without negatives such as hate, violence, or other evils of society. If everyone is happy -- and there is even an off-handed rational why everyone seems obese because of the low gravity which indicates that maybe their physical condition might not even be all that unhealthy for them -- then what is the problem? The Earth is ruined and no amount of exercise or good health is gong to change that.
four thumbs up
Cute little robot
WALL-E should be called STALK-R
But no fatties please
This is a romantic comedy about a guy who loses a girlfriend, goes on vacation to forget her only to see her there. So he falls in love with the girl who works the front desk. It is standard but it is pretty funny.
I've had a huge crush on Kristin Bell since the awesome Veronica Mars but Mila Kunis steals the show here. Sure it helps that Bell plays the woman who dumped our main character and Kunis is the new love interest but she is really sweet here.
Watching this made me feel damn lonely. I need me some love people! But it was still pretty fun.
four thumbs up
Kristin and Mila
Make me feel really lonely!
damn you hot women!
There's a comic book out now called Kick Ass that is about a normal kid in a normal world without superheroes who one day decides to become one and naturally gets beaten up.
I'd heard about Robot Ninja for a few years. It is by the same guy who made Dead Next Door which is a favorite of mine and so I wanted to see it. So it is a coincidence that after reading Kick Ass I see the similarly themed Robot Ninja.
The movie is about a guy who writes and draws the Robot Ninja comic book. The character has been licensed to a television producer that has made it more like the Batman television show than the serious project the creator intended.
On the way back from arguing with the television producers, the creator sees a crime occurring and tries to stop it. He gets his ass kicked. So he has someone make a real Robot Ninja outfit for him and he gets his ass kicked again.
Although the acting is laughable, the movie is pretty good. Rather than have the story be some simple revenge movie it looks at what would happen if one unarmed guy were to take on a gang of people. The end is a big muddled and the creator's final actions aren't quite clear but it is certainly not what I thought would happen.
four thumbs up
Don't try to fight crime
Unless you have a big gun
and the bad guys don't
This is a really interesting film and a great premise but its pacing is all off.
The premise is that a series of seemingly normal people with no connection to one another begin to go on a killing spree and when the police arrive and ask why they did it they always say, "God told me to." Unfortunately, we are really only shown two of the killers (one of whom is Andy Kaufman as a police office who starts to shoot people while marching in a parade with dozens of other police officers. "God told me to" is his only line). Once that happens the film goes off in an odd direction which I found a little too cryptic and unresolved for its own good.
If it could have stayed with the police office, our hero, as he tried to figure things out a bit more before going into the weirdness it might have worked better. Or if it were done a bit better. Maybe I missed it but at one point near the end the police officer says something about him being special and I was like, "he is?" I just thought that he was a random cop assigned to the case but apparently he was special. Maybe making that clearer would have been more effective. There's also a subplot about his estranged wife and his girlfriend that seems as if it could have been eliminated although I admit in hindsight there is at least one bit of information that comes out about the cop that does indicate something about his specialness. I think that could have been revealed without the complication of the girlfriend and the added scenes with her that distracted from the more interesting murderers.
That's not to say that there aren't some good parts. There are quite a few. The beginning is solid and two other scenes stick out. The cop goes to talk to a man who killed his wife and child(ren? I can't remember). It is really eerie to see the guy so calmly and dispassionately talk about shooting his wife and then trying to talk his daughter out of a locked room so he can kill her too. Then there is also a scene, and again, perhaps I wasn't paying attention, where you think the person is talking about one guy but then you realize the person is talking about someone else entirely which was pretty good as well. The film is certainly worth a watch though
four thumbs up
remake this movie
so it is more like Se7en
then it would kick ass
I'm not a fan of Full Moon movies. Films like the Puppet Master films are usually too cutesy in their corny-ness for me. I would rather have a film that is corny but trying to be serious than a film that is trying to be corny and just comes off cutesy.
I am, however, a fan of Jeffrey Combs who is the man. He is the only actor to play two different characters in the same episode of Star Trek series.
So because of the Full Moon angle I wasn't expecting too much from this but I did get it because of Combs' involvement. I'm glad I got it. This is probably one of the best Full Moon movies.
What makes it so good is that there aren't any of the Full Moon signatures: no puppets, no humor, and obvious teaser for a sequel. In fact, for a film that does revolve around a creepy guy who has been trapped in a basement for years, it is kind of thoughtful. Honestly, the final scene really surprised me with its (almost entirely successful) attempt at artfullness and emotional impact.
Combs finds out that he has inherited a castle and he and his wife and daughter go to Italy to check it out. The daughter is recently blind due to an accident in which Combs drove drunk. That accident also resulted into death of the son. Because of this, Combs and his wife are on the edge of a divorce. Although Combs has been sober for 90 days the wife still blames him for the death of the son. After a fight, Combs goes into town, gets drunk, and brings a prostitute back to the castle. The next morning the prostitute is missing and Combs is suspected. Because of some stories and some sounds his daughter had been hearing, he tells the cops that it is the scary guy that has been kept in the basement for years. They, of course, don't believe him.
four thumbs up
It really is good
just give it a better name
Like, "Jeffrey Combs Rocks."
Although it looks like this movie stars Puck from the Real World it doesn't. And although there is someone named Liz Hurley in it, this Liz Hurley isn't the famous Elizabeth Hurley. Nope, there isn't anyone famous in this but it is still a fairly entertaining film.
Combining elements from HP Lovecraft's From Beyond, Buckaroo Banzai, and Videodrome, the movie is about a film geek, Shemp, who films everything and his friends. They find a tape that turns out to be from a scientist who invented a machine to view other dimensions (actually the scientist invented a way to record audio and video before film was invented and somehow -- how is never explained -- that recording was transfered to a VHS tape). So of course the gang goes to investigate this guy.
Luckily, he was from their town and they eventually find his machine and then the movie pretty much goes to hell. Shemp gets melded to his video camera and goes crazy. Some zombies turn up. Some alien insects also show up as well. But forget about those zombies and insects because the film makers did since there really isn't any reason for them to be in the film and they get taken care of really quickly. Shemp is the main problem. If the film had managed to keep its tone and plot together this film might have been a personal favorite.
four thumbs up
Opportunities
they missed nearly all of them
with tunnel vision.
Another movie about the last man alive trying to save the world. I sense a pattern here...
This movie is pretty hard for me to review because I'm such a big fan of the original novella. In fact I just reread it in preparation to see this movie. Taken as a movie that has nothing to do with any book it is pretty good. Compared to the book, there are both positive as well as negative changes but the book is still much less straightforward than the film.
The basic setting is that there has been some sort of virus and everyone in the world but our hero,
Robert Neville has been turned into vampires. Positive differences between the film and book: In the book Neville is just a guy but he manages to educate himself about the virus and figure out how it works. With modern medicine it seem unlikely that some guy without any medical training could identify the cause of a disease when, as the book mentions, professional scientists didn't seem to be able to figure out what was going on. In the film Neville is a medical guy who has a laboratory and such. He's brought in specifically to work on the virus (which is a bacteria in the book and not a virus but it doesn't really matter)
In the book Neville is immune because he had been bitten by a bat when he was in the military and stationed at a base in the Philippines. In the movie 1% of people are immune and he just happens to be part of the 1%.
In the book the vampirism is caused by dust storms and potential nuclear war. In the film it is a cancer cure gone wrong.
Bad differences between the book and the film: In the film everything is exactly like is seems. There is only one surprise and it isn't really that important. In the book nothing is as it seems. Reading the book is a constant experience of having your expectations upended as we learn more and more about the world Neville is in.
In the film while Neville loses his wife and kid there isn't much lingering after effects. In the book there is a lot more emotional anguish at the loss of his daughter and especially his wife.
In the film while one of the vampires shows some intelligence, they are mostly dumb and don't know where he lives. In the book they know where he lives and can talk. Every night he has to listen to them standing outside his house yelling, "Come out Neville!" Also, there is an emotional connection between Neville and the main bad guy.
Finally, the end. The end of the film really stinks. To go along with the fact that everything is exactly what it seems, there is a shiny happy ending. In the book there is an ending that, while some would consider happy, isn't nearly so clear cut.
On its own the film is pretty good with a final act which is too short, suffers for becoming overly Hollywood with explosions and gunfire, and isn't as satisfying as it could be. The book kicks its ass. I would hope that there is an alternate, less happy ending that they could put out on dvd. They were 2 acts into a really good film and then went with the easy ending.
Besides the obvious adaptation of the book, the film owes a lot to The World, The Flesh and The Devil. More or less the first act of the film is a remake of The World with Smith walking around a deserted Manhattan and talking to mannequins. In fact a crucial scene in I Am Legend is when Smith's character has an altercation with a mannequin. If someone who made this movie hasn't seen The World I will be very very surprised.
Another film that I Am Legend owes something to (besides 28 Days Later) is Children of Men. While Legend doesn't adopt Children's documentary look wholesale, there is a scene where Smith's character is hunting a deer that is shot very handheld and could easily be in Children. Moreover, Legend takes a note from Children and uses newspaper clippings in the background to fill us in on some details of the world in which the film takes place.
four thumbs up
Smith does get jiggy
with all the vampire killing
but there is no heart
Like Gaimain's Stardust (which I'm sure I reviewed but seems to have disappeared) I had low expectations for this movie going into it. I liked Gaiman's early stuff. Sandman, Black Orchid, Signal to Noise, pretty much everything he's done with Dave McKean. But the stuff he's done lately like American Gods, 1602 and Eternals hasn't thrilled me. Luckily, like Stardust, I was pretty pleased with Beowulf.
I've read Beowulf but it has been a long long time ago and I don't really remember much about it. From reading wikipedia after seeing the film I gather there were some pretty big changes to some of the details. Oh well. I certainly didn't mind. I was a bit curious as to why Beowulf was wearing Roman-style gear, especially since it was so cold there.
Certainly the most remarkable thing about the film is the animation. It is really good. There are certainly moments where it is easy to forget that it is computer generated. Then there are moments when it is painfully obvious that it is not a real person and it just sucks you out of the whole film. Overall it is more good than bad.
Ignoring the computer graphics, while watching the film I found it very difficult not to think about the Lord of the Rings. And of course it shouldn't be a surprise since Tolkien stole a lot from Beowulf. But there is some weird circular intertextuality going on because the Lord of the Rings references the earlier Beowulf whose movie version references the Lord of the Rings. Not only in story -- and I'm sure that they had to work hard in pre-production on how to make Grendel look humanoid without looking too much like Gollem -- but also in style the film evokes the parts of the Lord of the Ring films that take place in Rohan -- the culture most heavily influenced by the people depicted in Beowulf. I'm not sure that one could avoid comparisons with the Lord of the Rings films but with using overhead shots and big buildings on top of hills, they certainly didn't go out of their way to avoid it.
The most idiotic thing in the entire movie happens when Beowulf decides that he is going to fight Grendel naked. They go to outlandish and unintentionally hilarious lengths to hide his schlong. Wouldn't it have been easier just to have him leave his pants on?
Other than that, if you liked Lord of the Rings films you will probably like Beowulf.
four thumbs up
Beowulf fights nude
but please whatever you do
don't look at his junk
The story is really simple. A rat wants to be a cook. But it is told in an entertaining way. Unlike Cars which was about a flawed character learning to be a better person (or car...), Ratatouille is about trying to make your dreams come true. While the main character has to learn to balance his life, there really isn't the overly moralistic and overt sentimentality that was in Cars (and I could believe in talking rats a lot more than talking cars!).
Cars also seemed pretty calculated in its execution as well with its tie in to racing and the abundance of popular musicians singing songs for the soundtrack and the overt comic relief character like 'Matter while Ratatouille doesn't have anyone singing songs and there aren't any comic sidekicks. The humor is much more slapstick with the rat controlling the human and attempting to avoid detection.
four thumbs up
I hate rats so much
but this film is ok though
stay out of my house.
Following the lead of movies such as Animal House, Meatballs, Porky's and any number of late 70s/early 80s teen comedies this movies is about the teenagers fighting against the older generation who wants to close down the arcade.
Our heroes are a nerd who is the butt of a joke in the first scene of the film, the cool guy whose grandfather owns the arcade and not only helps the nerd get back at the girls who played a joke on the nerd, and John Belushi's Bluto wannabe, McDorfus who is the slovenly videogame wizard who ends up saving the day by using his farts to attract the wife of the villain. The villainous old man who is opposed to the arcade is played by none other than the man, the myth, the legend, Joe Don Baker. Man, if Joe Don Baker and Don "The Dragon" Wilson did a movie together it would be awesomeness personified. Joe Don's character also has a couple of bumbling henchmen who are the butt of the other kids jokes and
a daughter who is an over-the-top valley girl whose valley speak is so heavy it is almost unintelligible. She is played by Corinne Bohrer whose name probably isn't familiar (it wasn't to me) but whose face probably will be. She's the only cast member I've ever seen in anything else
Of course, as is the case in these movies, it isn't enough to save the arcade. The main character also has to overcome a personal problem and can you guess what it is? That's right, he can't play videogames any more. Ever since his girlfriend's dad took his girlfriend away he can't look at a videogame without getting dizzy and/or fainting. He eventually conquers his fear by beating the Old bad guy sponsored punk. It is interesting that the old man has a problem with an arcade but not with the punk. But they can't have the final confrontation just be at some ordinary arcade cabinet. No, they have this special screen set up and they play with joysticks that are waist high and have the buttons on the big ball at the top of the joystick. It looks like it would be hard as hell to play with them. I suppose that is just a testament to how good these players are, right?
Unlike the Wizard, which was the debut of Super Mario Brothers 3, Joysticks features some fairly obscure games like Satan's Hollow, Streaking, and Super Pac-Man among others. Half the fun of watching the movie is trying to figure out whatever weird game someone is playing.
four thumbs up
It has lots of boobs
and it has joe don baker
want to play a game?
