Land of the Lost

Land of the Lost (2009)


Director: Brad Silberling
Writer:Chris Henchy, Dennis McNicholas (movie writing) Sid & Marty Krofft (tv show)
Starring: Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride

Synopsis
dr. guy creates some sort of time machine using tachyons and crystals. he and a fan/ college chick and some hick trailer guy go back in time and have an "adventure" trying to get back.

The Woman
i'm not exactly sure why i put this on the queue. i knew it was going to be bad and not really funny, but it was really bad, and not funny at ALL. usually i expect some funny out of will ferrell. i like his sense of humor. i think his humor is found in his randomness, and this movie didn't have a shred of random in it. that goes for danny mcbride too. it felt extremely rehearsed. (maybe, perhaps a misguided attempt at cheese?) it was a similar feeling to the point in which i stopped watching saturday night live. the skits went on for twice as long as they should have, to the point where the joke wasn't funny anymore. the plot was unfunny stupid too.

 the show was great. the appeal of the show was the cheese factor. when studios dump tons of money into comedy remakes of low budget cheese it tends to fail miserably. the magic mixture has been tampered with. like all those cold products that had to change it's ingredients or be put behind the counter. add this to the ranks of dayquil. terrible and ineffective.

The Wrestler

The Wrestler (2008)


Director: Darren Aronofsky
Writer: Robert D. Siegel
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei

Synopsis
a has been wrestler living his life after the limelight with no money, or house, or family, or anything. but he still wrestles because he's a wrestler.

MOster
Opening this with self-flattery, I will say that I've been largely underwhelmed by the other critics' choices in 2008.

I'm an Aaronofsky fan--I even really appreciated The Fountain--but this was a boring pile of boring.  Almost everything was here. Acting was really good. Production was really believable.  And it was a great, naturalistic, easy approach by Our Darren.  But the only element of this story we haven't seen before is Marissa Tomei's fakely-pierced tits.

Using the fanciest font you can develop doesn't change the fact that your message is 2+2=4.

The Womani thought this was actually pretty boring. i understand the premise, but eh. boring. i thought it was going to be horribly depressing, but it wasn't to me. i felt very indifferent to all the characters. life sucks, man. especially when you can't let go and you've been doing all sorts of  steroids and horse tranquilizers and oxycontin for at least twenty years.

The Day the Earth Stood Still... Again!

The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)
Written by David Scarpa (derived by), Edmund H. North (derived from)
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Starring A Block of Wood, A Younger Woman with a Mortgage, An Older Woman with a Mortgage, A British Gentlemen with Eleven Mortgages, A Relative Newcomer Who Still Should Have Known Better, Daniel San

Synopsis
Again this falls on me; but it will be easier this time.  A mysterious sphere shoots from far away right into Central Park.  Our government (and ONLY our government) is able to determine that with no course correction it will land in Central Park.  A canoe emerges, only to be shot, poked, prodded, and condescended to before it escapes.  Because Americans are the only example it requires, all this crap shows it how poorly humanity is doing and it makes the decision to extinctify us.  But then it learns about love from a stupid little boy who knows little more than how to complain and idolize his dead soldier father; so the Earth stands still... but not really.

The Woman
this was fantastic! all remakes should be as good as this. then maybe hollywood would stop making remakes. this movie is a perfect example of taking a simple, one track, moral of the story, classic and making so complex, and twisted around, that in the end it makes no sense. klaatu never spoke to anyone in power, never got his message across to the human race before he just said 'you guys are cool' to jennifer connelly and away he went up into the blue. the whole premise of this remake is that the human race must be pushed to the edge of destruction to realize they need to change. a plague of robotic locusts that go a hundred miles is not going to change the whole of mankind. i don't even think it would change american mankind. maybe it would. i feel the change in my heart. we can no longer fight wars and poison this planet. the robotic locusts have destroyed I-95. at least one trucker has died. we must change.

also what was the deal with the chinese/alien observer guy that sold us down the river. way to go asshole. now we're all doomed. you say you want to stay and die with us because we're so loveable and wonderful, but you can't tell an eentsie weentsie lie and tell keanu that our race is awesome and we'll hug trees, and dance around with daisies in our hair, holding hands and singing kumbaya!?! jerk.

i loved this movie.

ps. the earth stood still in the first one to get the attentions of the leaders of the world. it was not some expert throw in 'oh crap the earth has to stand still, because it's the title of the movie.....ummmm. we shall make it a fancy way for klaatu's ship to take off in the last 30 seconds of the movie'

MOster

This movie didn't exceed my expectations; it bucked them. I expected to see the Canoe doing more one-on-one stuff with that icy voice, and his Canoe-ness might have served that concept well.  But what we got was much more stock stupidity.  I could do a few hundred words just about the geography in this thing, but we'll skip that.

What was cool about the first movie was that Klaatu really was a cool customer.  This guy goes around and gets himself into trouble on purpose.  Then he does things like kill people just so he can resurrect them. Is he an investigator? An enforcer? A judge/jury?  You probably shouldn't care.

There's a whole thing with the army trying to (against Posse Comitatus) destroy the sphere or the robot, kind of reveling in the futility of their actions.  There's some sort of something about the robot turning into (or generating?) locusts which eat things? But it's unclear if they're eating humans or just stadiums.  Then there's something about spheres similar to the one that landed in Central Park (but the Americans were only cool enough to exactly track the one that went into Central Park) acting as some kind of arcs to take the other species away.  Even the people making the movie didn't take these things seriously enough to explain them with throwaway bullshit.

There are some good supporting actors here.  John Cleese plays the character probably most similar to his counterpart in the other film.  Jennifer Connelly does fine, because she knows how to read; but her character is completely different.  Leaving aside the whole thing about them shutting down the highway so she could get to the airport (way to keep a low profile, guys), she's some sort of xenobiologist but she obviously has no idea what she's talking about when she's asked.  Kathy Bates plays the Defense Secretary (see? we live in a progressive world) who ends up opposed to the violence.  All it takes is for humans (i.e. Americans) to be shown the mortality of their species.  And then there's poor, poor John Hamm who floats in and out of the story like what's-his-face McFly.  (There may have been some explanation to how he came back in; but neither of us caught that part of the movie... and usually between the two of us we consume 100% of even the dumbest movies).

AND we get to listen to Will Smith's kid! Holy shit, Will Smith has a kid! And he acts! And he's cute! And he's a curmudgeon! But he's still cute!

They should have made "Bill and Ted 3," in which Keanu Reeves goes back to the early 90s ans surgically sterilizes Will Smith.  That would have been considerably more entertaining, even in its shittiest form.

The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009)
Written by Jonas Frykberg, Steig Larsson (book)
Directed by Daniel Alfredson
Starring Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Lena Endre, Peter Andersson

Synopsis
lisbeth salander is framed for a triple homocide. crime thriller things happen.

MOster
This was good.  It was interesting and well-paced.  

Returning to kick ass in a superlative way is Ms. Rapace as Lisbeth.  She enters the film looking like she's had some time off to think and eat (and yes, woman, I know you disagree) but her core is no softer and her performance of this excellent character is not to be trifled with.  Ditto Nyqvist/Blomkvist (though in his own special way).


While procrastinating writing this, I had the opportunity to think more about it.  I enjoyed this, but I wasn't floored by it.  This is a competent mystery-action-drama, but it's not much of a follow-up to the first film and I sincerely hope--and I've also been led to believe--that it's more in the adaptation than the source material. 

The Woman
i liked the first one better. that is not to say this wasn't good. it was. it just didn't have the mystery aspect. i also didn't like how nyquist and salander didn't work together in this. they only come together in the last scene. she is a pretty kick ass chick. i can dig. i also can't wait for the next installment.

X-men Origins: Wolverine

X-men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Director: Gavin Hood
Writer: David Benioff, Skip Woods
Starring: Huge Ackman, Liev Schreiber

Synopsis
like the title says, the "origin story" of wolverine.....no further comment

The Woman
i admire liev schreiber's nose. that's about all the positive things i have to say about this movie. i only had a couple of weapon X comic books, and i read them *cough, hack* twenty odd years ago, but i can tell you this was not only incorrect, but a PG version. wait. PG-13 because of 1 distant bare ass. if i was a contemporary 12 year old i might have enjoyed this film. and, as the esteemed judge marilyn milian of people's court fame would say, " if i had two wheels i'd be a bicycle"

the music was totally outrageous in this movie too. it was like michael bay, jerry bruckheimer style, but without the outrageous moments. there were outrageous moments, but this super dramatic, over orchestration would come on when things were quiet. like after the girlfriend dies and wolverine is shouting to the heavens above. yes. the old overhead shot of a man holding his dead love shouting into the air. mostly used as a joke nowadays. total for serious in this movie.

ooh. i thought of another positive then negative thing. i like how you can tell some actors are comic dorks i.e dominic monaghan who had all of two lines before he died, but then i think 'did he read the script?' would a person outweigh the inaccuracies and stupidity just to play a certain character? hmmmmm.

that's all that pops out of my brain on this one.

"you know what happens to a toad when it gets hit by lighting?"

The Spirit

The Spirit (2008)


Director: Frank Miller
Writer: Frank Miller (screenplay) Will Eisner (comic)
Starring: Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson

**We have decided that this movie cannot be spoiled. (that it's impossible to spoil because there is nothing to spoil. not that we don't want to spoil it for you. you should read between the lines here and never watch this movie)**

Synopsis
Oh, I have to write the synopsis of this?  Gee, OK.

Fairly recently in the land of whatever-Metropolisburgvilleshireton:

This one kid had a "relationship" with this unnecessarily cute girl, but then somebody shot her cop father so she left to become a Mistress Thief.  But the guy was more in love with the city than with her so he decided to stay. (Also she quite rudely declined to ask him.) Instead he fell in love with the law and became a cop.  And then somebody shot him.  And then for some reason to which I wasn't paying attention (see below) he became a vigilante with a new identity: the Spirit of the City.  Also somewhere in here he

a) became invulnerable (see below)
and b) learned that between each pair of female legs there is a distinct vaginal opening.

Anyway, just before the credits roll you learn that--wait for it!--one plus one equals two.


The Woman
this might be the worst movie i've ever seen. worse than "bride wars" worse than my memories of that john goodman movie "matinee" which i actually turned off when i was a pre-teen. this was torture to watch in it's entirety. i did it for you people, and you should appreciate my sacrifice.  i don't know where to begin on the root of where this all went terribly wrong. every choice made was the wrong one. like an infected pussy scab turned gangrenous on a limb. it was just all bad, man. the acting was public access channel bad. and just because the fank miller style worked for frank miller in "sin city" does not mean it can work for every comic turned movie. "sin city" was gritty and violent and written well. this was 40's radio fluffy trying to be tuff enough, and the art direction just made it more unbearable. and there are plenty of movies where this james cagney/ katherine hepurn style of speech worked moderately well. i.e. "the hudsucker proxy", or i'm even willing to go as far as to say "dick tracy" was better than this. if i could give this a zero star rating i would. if there was a time machine where i could go back in time and get my hour and a half back, and erase all knowledge of this movie's viewing, only the hint of a bad taste in my mouth, and the instinct to treat this movie like the plague. i would risk a time paradox.

MOster
I'm tempted to just write "see above" and live with the circular-reference joke, but no.


There were many things wrong with this movie.  Not being the comic book dork in the Intersection (i.e. my marriage) I can't speak to the accuracy of the story porting.  However, being the dork snob that I am I expect it to be pretty close.  With that in mind, I'm opening the gate to this edition of Three... Jump! on the bottom step.

I don't know how much of the acting is the actors' fault.  Scarlett Johansen, for example, plays her role in exactly the opposite way from Happier, With Your Mouth Open and the rookie cop (who, of course, is the eager, extra-super-smart girl from out of town) continually moves her jaw around in a circle while she speaks.  Then there's our Mr. Jackson, who we know is capable of pulling thousands of asses to the edges of their seats

Then there's our Mr. Jackson, who we know is capable of pulling millions of asses to the edges of their seats



but here he can't even keep necks vertical.  The gigantic mastermind-explains-the-plot-to-the-hero scene cuts back and forth between his pontificating and fuzzy flashbacks to Mr. Spirit's history, but it does so in such a history teacher, Ben Stein in Ferris manner that I just couldn't pay attention.  Luckily nothing else about the movie made me give a flying fuck.

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OK.  I've been working on this for three days.  It's not nearly as funny as I'd like it to be and there's no point in continuing. I strongly recommend against watching this movie.

The Fourth Kind

The Fourth Kind (2009)


Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Writer: Olatunde Osunsanmi, Terry Robbins
Starring: Mila Jovovich, Elias Koteas aka casey jones

Synopsis
after the death of her husband, a psychiatrist continues her research of rampant insomnia  found in nome, alaska. they all have the same vision of a white owl. abduction theories start to emerge. (personally i think the goblin king is to blame) based on a true? story.

The Woman
i'm not sure what to think of this. i feel this is not quite authentic. there's too much pale make-up on the "real" dr. abagail tyler, and there is a little bit too much "this is REAL" announcements. that said, i did appreciate the style of split screening the "real" video sessions and the professionally acted ones, blending the voices, and lip syncing and all that. i thought this would be scarier. as far as real abduction movies go i think i liked "fire in the sky" better, but not a bad attempt on this one. i also liked the 'is she just grief stricken all kinds of crazy' angle to leave the viewer with a not quite certain feeling. the actor and director disclaimers were a little on the too much, eye rolling side. those could have been left out. especially with the epilogue texts directly following.