American: The Bill Hicks Story (2009)

November 29, 2011 Leave a Comment

 

Wait a second, isn’t this a documentary? It is! It is a fucking documentary! How the fuck do you review a documentary?! I think I only reviewed one other documentary, which was Exit Through the Gift Shop, and that was probably just because I was so excited to tell other people about it. I’ve watched quite a few documentaries since doing this blog, but clearly don’t review many. The first reason why I don’t really review them is because the content is typically something of fact, and it’s hard to critique facts. If I watch something about Abraham Lincoln and talk a whole bunch of shit about the Emancipation Proclamation, it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. For the record, I wouldn’t talk shit on it, it was just the first example that came to mind. I can’t really argue that he only freed the slaves because of how popular Paranormal Activity was or some bullshit like that. The second reason is that I feel all documentaries are essentially persuasive essays, or an op-ed piece. Someone will take a point that they want to get across, they use research, facts, and editing to put their argument together to convince the audience of what that point is. No matter how political or mundane the documentary might be, there is a message they’re trying to get across. Even something like The King of Kong, about a guy trying to get the all time top score on Donkey Kong, portrays a clear underdog and a huge egotistical dick as his enemy, yet after the film’s release, both parties came out and admitted things were dramatized for entertainment’s sake. So why did I decide to review this documentary? Well because it pissed me the fuck off, that’s why.

 

So wait, Bill Hicks wasn’t always wearing weird turtlenecks and shit?

 

Bill Hicks grew up in a few places before settling in Houston, TX. His friends loved comedy, and Bill made his way to performing stand-up as early as the age of 15. Despite partaking in a heavy amount of hallucinogenics, Bill didn’t lose sight of what he wanted, and was able to move to L.A. to further pursue his career in comedy. Hicks found some success, but also found lots of rejection with his writing. Feeling defeated, Hicks moved back to Houston where he started drinking, leading to alcohol abuse. Despite being intelligent and entertaining, his stage antics caused a fallout amongst his friends and fellow performers, leading to his stint in rehab. Once cleaned up, he had refocused all of his energy on comedy and his peers considered him to be at the top of his game. Unfortunately, a lot of his material involved religion in politics, as well as commenting on the sad state of the American population. Despite being regarded as one of the most talented comedians of his time, he was never accepted by a mainstream audience, causing more feelings of defeat. Hicks found lots of success in the UK, being an American whose material spoke out about America, only to return to the United States and have his material frowned upon. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which is when he went even further into his frustrations with America, the press, and broadcast television. His last tour had a lot less humor, but a lot more honesty, and Hicks seemed to embrace death as an inevitability, until he passed away in 1994 at the age of 32.

 

Shitty photo of Hicks or a good photo that was intentionally made to look shitty for the artistic goals of the documentary? YOU DECIDE!

 

Unfortunately, this was a pretty shitty documentary. It could be argued that the movie fails because of the facts it represents, but I’ll get to that in a moment. The biggest flaw would be the visual style that was used to “recreate” moments from the past. There wasn’t that much video of Hicks when he was young, so they instead chose to use motion graphics to give some sort of energy to photos of him. What does that mean? Well, it means they would take a picture of Hicks, cut everything out around him, then put that picture in the front seat of a car, and animate the car to show him driving somewhere. It looks like someone who was a huge fan of Saul Bass trying to emulate his style, but it was done poorly and looked more like an episode of South Park. After tolerating that for the first 20 minutes or so, a lot more actual footage was used, and it was enjoyable for about 45 minutes. The last 20 minutes reverted back towards the South Park style, and it looked like shit again. The filmmakers had interviewed people whose voices were used to narrate over some of the animated sequences, yet we don’t see these people until the very end of the film. I guess I can appreciate the attempt at making a documentary in a different style, it’s just disappointing to see that syle being done so poorly. Anyone remember that show on MTV called BIORhythm, where they used pictures and played music instead of having a voice over? It looked a lot like that, and that show got canceled for a reason. And now that there was a documentary about Bill Hicks, we’re going to have to wait years and years before another one comes out that will hopefully accomplish more than this film did.

 

There’s that crazy 90′s fashion I was looking for!

 

The story of Bill Hicks might not seem that exciting, compared to any number of other comedians who have had documentaries about them, but what was exceptional about Hicks was the content of all his materia. By no means was he the first angry comic, and you could trace his influences to influences to influences, but I feel his style really impacted any number of more popular “angry” comedians today. He talked about every subject on stage with as much passion as any other topic, whether it be a rant about his frustrations with the Catholic church, to a stories involving dicks, to a story about his taking hallucinogenics that had no punchline. it wasn’t his job to make you laugh, because he made you work for the joke. If you understood what he was saying and found the punchline, good for you, but he wasn’t going to hold your hand through the process, and if you didn’t get the joke, then that’s your problem. An acquaintance in college used to always say Bill Hicks was his favorite comedian, and I didn’t think that guy was funny, so I ignored him. Only now, years later, do I truly understand how big of an impact he has had on stand-up comedy, and it’s too bad that he died so young, and without more people realizing his talent.

 

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Predators (2010)

June 13, 2011 5 Comments

 

Have I ever seen the first Predator, start to finish? No, I don’t think I have. I know who is in it, and a general idea of what happens, but I don’t think I ever had the desire nor the attention span to dedicate time to the original.  I do remember watching predator 2 because I borrowed it from a friend right before I moved out of an apartment because all my DVDs were packed, and even then I only kind of remember a Danny Glover vs. Predator fist fight. The Alien vs. Predator movies both kind of sucked, so I really have no idea why I watched this movie in the first place. I guess I figured that the involvement of Robert Rodriguez would make it a more entertaining movie? I’m just trying to say that I had low expectations for this movie, but it showed up on Netflix, so obviously had to watch it. Damn!

 

LOOKS LIKE BRODY-MAN’S BEEN WORKIN’ OUT

 

Adrien Brody, also known as Brody-Man, also known as the character of “Royce” in this film, is seen falling through the sky, having a parachute open, and land on the ground. He sees a few other people on the ground, and one thing they have in common is that none of them know where they are or how they got there. Through talking to one another, they find out they are all deadly people, whether they are mercenaries, prisoners, or members of the Yakuza. After trying to figure out where they are, they determine that they are not even on Earth, and then get attacked by alien dog monsters. After following those tracks, they come across an imprisoned alien predator, and get the feeling that some crazy shit is going on. The group finds Laurence Fishburne, also known as Larry, who admits that he’s been living on this planet for years. I  guess there was something about two different kinds of predators and they hate each other or some sort of backstory, I don’t know, but Brody-Man kills Larry, but not before Larry gives away the plot points that the alien predators are honing their hunting skills by killing the strongest members of other planets. Eventually Brody-Man kills some of the predators, including an homage to the original involving mud and fire, only to end the movie with Brody-Man and some lady watching as a new group of recruits lands on the planet. Is this the end of Brody-Man?

 

Apparently this was a new kind of predator. Looks exactly the fucking same to me. Go figure!

 

Some people might get cranky over the fact that I left out some of the plot details because I got bored typing them, but fuck those people. I don’t think not mentioning the Topher Grace double-cross or the fact that the planet was a “game preserve” will reduce the quality of this movie, or my thoughts. Topher Grace claims to have been the one to set everything up, which means there has to be some sort of human/predator communication? How the fuck did that happen? And how did they find Topher Grace? Did they were trenchcoats and ask to meet him in a dark alley? I guess this movie was entertaining enough, but didn’t really do much for me either way. I’m sure that big predator fans will be annoyed at this movie just at its mere existence, but I didn’t really mind it or find it that much worse than the Alien vs. Predator movies. Really the only thing of note that I took away from this movie was seeing Brody-Man as somewhat of an asshole, and the one scene where a predator grabs a guy’s spine and rips it out completely, all the way up to and including his skull. Gnarly.

 

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The Hurt Locker (2008)

May 1, 2011 Leave a Comment



This film marked the second year in a row that a movie won best picture at the Oscars and I had no fucking clue what it was. The previous year being Slumdog Millionaire, and then this movie, that has something to do with lockers, I thought. Turns out it has nothing to do with lockers. I was working in a theater at the time this movie came out, and I remember other employees recommending it to me, but I was too lazy to see it. It got to a point where it was showing in the same theater as some bullshit movie called “Camp Rock”, and they were alternating showtimes. Camp Rock and The Hurt Locker are very different, one being about the people who defuse bombs in Iraq, and the other being Camp fucking Rock. Let’s just say that I was a little embarrassed when I got a call on the radio asking me to check on the movie, which was supposed to be The Hurt Locker, and I saw Lisa Kudrow’s face on the screen. Yeah, that’s right, Lisa Kudrow was in Camp Rock. Anyways, it took me two years to see this movie, and not a moment too soon!



Shoot those fuckers in the head! USA! USA!

 

We see in the first ten minutes just how stressful it is being a bomb diffuser in the Iraq War, especially if you are a character being portrayed by Guy Pearce, because it means you will blow up and die. Guy Pearce is replaced by Jeremy Renner, who is going to play Hawkeye in the Avengers movie, so I will only refer to him as that. Anyways, we meet Hawkeye listening to some “heavy metal” music and being all intense and shit. On his first mission, he acts like an asshole and throws a smoke bomb and disconnects his radio so that everyone thinks he is awesome. Well, he’s not, he’s just kind of a dick. He gets the job done, of course, but not without alienating the other people on his squad. He discover that clearly Hawkeye isn’t necessarily in it for the good that he’s doing, as much as he is in it for the adrenaline rush, which clearly means he’s got some mental issues going on. From disconnecting his headset, to not wearing any bomb protection, to leading his squad on rogue missions and accidentally shooting someone in his squad, Hawkeye is spiraling out of control. We then see him back at home, considering his tour of duty was over. After a few quick scenes showing his obvious discomfort with his life at home, we then see him being redeployed for another year of service.



And BOOM goes the dynamite!

 

This won the fucking Oscar? Are you kidding me? I’m not trying to say that fucking Avatar should have one, because it shouldn’t, but the fact that this bullshit movie did was such a pussy, political move. Let me first acknowledge that the people who are superfans of this movie will try to call me out by saying “You just didn’t get it, man”, and call all of you douches. This was basically a modern-day Rambo, in the sense that the U.S. government and military forces took all these people, whether it be the Iraq or Vietnam war, trained them to be ruthless killers, and clearly caused psychological damage that resulted in these people never being the same again. The difference between the two is that Rambo was a dick who was causing all of this carnage, only to make the point of psychological damage at the end of the movie. The Hurt Locker was clearly showing the mental instability of all of the soldiers involved in the war, yet at the end, we get to see Hawkeye walking back into battle while heavy metal music was playing, showing how “cool” or “bad ass” this guy was, completely taking the wind out of this movie’s sails. I enjoyed it for the most part, right up until the end when they lost me. It seems like the plot description of this movie was “war is bad, heavy metal is good, bomb blower upper guys, slow motion walking, guns, desert, blood, AWESOME!” The performances were good, and it gives me hope when I will get to see Hawkeye playing Hawkeye, but I really just think this was pretentious bullshit, considering everybody knows that war is bad and you don’t need heavy metal to prove it.


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Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

April 6, 2011 Leave a Comment



Did you really expect me to watch the first one and not watch the second one? What are you, dumb or retarded? I guess I am the retarded one because I also own this on DVD, along with the first. My initial plan to see this film happened to coincide with another road trip I was taking, this time with Beardy, and we were meeting up with Lazer and Steve-o Beevo in Chicago. The four of us were going to see it one night, but then I think we got distracted and ate pizza. While walking around with Beardy and Lazer the next day, we got a call from Steve-o Beevo who had JUST FUCKING SEEN IT WITHOUT US. WHAT A COCK. The three of us were too distraught to go see it without him, even as an act of revenge, so I didn’t see it until the trip was over, and I saw it alone. How sad.



In the words of Rampaige, Johnny Storm is about to get choke slammed to Hell

 

We have all the same actors portraying the same characters, and since I just listed who those people were, I don’t feel like listing them again. Reed Richards and Sue Storm and finally tying the knot, but shit keeps getting in the way, like saving the world. In response to these two getting married, we have to deal with the shitty subplot about Johnny Storm fucking too many girls and not having a girlfriend. Whaaa??? When the wedding officially starts getting underway, the military interrupts because there is some sort of cosmic disturbance that looks like some sort of silver guy on a surfboard or something. Johnny takes after him, only to get beaten like a pussy in outer space. One thing that Johnny takes with him is a little bit of the Silver Surfers power cosmic, which after he touches his teammates, he is able to swap powers with them.



WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR HAIR DONE, THE TRASH STORE?! Hahahaha, get it? Because her hair looks shitty and weird?

 

Meanwhile, Dr. Doom is back to his old tricks and wants to take the surfer’s board in order to elevate his own powers. The government hires the four friends and Dr. Dickwad to figure out how to capture the surfer, which they succeed in. But guess what? Dr. Doom double-crosses them! Now the surfer and the friend squad are being held captive, and the surfer, real name Norrin Radd, reveals that he is a herald for an intergalactic enemy named Galactus that is on his way to destroy the planet. Norrin appears to be devoid of emotion, but the subtle seduction of Sue Storm shows him there is a reason to not be a dickhead, so with the Fantastic Four’s help, they all escape to get the surfboard back from Dr. Doom. Remember when I talked about power absorption? Well there is a shitty piece of dialogue about “Oh man, we can’t take Victor down, not even all four us are strong enough! BUT WAIT…what if all four of us combine into ONE OF US…HOLY SHIT WE DID IT.” So lame. They get the board back, but not without Sue Storm dying. WHOOPS. The Surfer gets his board back and goes to fight Galactus. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, Galactus is this giant guy wearing purple with arms and legs and hands and a helmet. In this movie? He is a giant storm? Or cloud? Some bullshit like that. The Silver Surfer fights the cloud and I guess kills it, and when he gets back to Earth is able to save sexy Sue Storm swiftly, Silver Surfer, Sufjan Stevens, superb! Sorry, I like S’s. Then Reed and Sue get married, once again having Brian Posehn as the priest. Cool!



Norrin Radd getting all Matrix-y and shit with the melty building

 

With a sequel, you generally have to raise the stakes a little bit, which this movie did, which worked in some ways and in some ways didn’t. There was less of a focus on Sue and Reed in this one, and a little bit more on Johnny, so clearly the filmmakers understood the stronger performances. However, Reed and Sue also seemed to be even shittier in this movie than they were in the previous one. And I’m not one to nitpick or anything, but Jessica Alba’s hair LOOKED LIKE SHIT. I mean, we get it, Sue is always portrayed as blonde, and in the first one, she was a brunette with highlights, which was fine. And now it was fucking bleach blonde horse hair that I knew even before meeting Rampaige was shitty and gross. Not that Rampaige has shitty, gross hair, but she never shuts up about fucking hair, she’s a psycho. If the movie was a rehash of the first, it would get the same score as the first one would, since the positive and negative changes balance out. What made this film a more interesting one was the addition of the Silver Surfer, mostly just because his scenes looked pretty cool. Not his storyline necessarily, but seeing the effects of him flying around and fighting things was kind of cool. Slightly better than the first, but still shouldn’t be too upset for skipping.


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TMNT (2007)

February 19, 2011 Leave a Comment

 

Remember how pumped I was on this movie coming out? I do! I was a big fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles growing up, and saw the first two movies, so why wouldn’t I have been excited about seeing this? I was working at a movie theater where it was being released when it originally came out, and I got to watch it the Thursday evening before it was supposed to be released, and I also invited a few friends along. More importantly, I had invited Nate Cabana, Adam Bach, and Brian J. Goddard. Do you know these people? Well, you should. Anyways, I was hard at work on a Thursday night, trying to do my work as quickly as possible to get ready. I was contacted by Brian, mentioning that he might be a few minutes late, but to get the movie started anyway. It doesn’t matter that I was sad that my friends weren’t there on time, it didn’t matter that they showed up once the movie already had started, but what did matter? Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that they SURPRISED ME WITH A WHOLE FUCKING PIZZA FROM ANTONIO’S……AND SODA. How could I have overlooked these details? In my years growing up, I had forgotten what’s important. For the Ninja Turtles, it’s about soda, pizza, friends, and crime-fighting. And I had finally had all of those things….especially the crime-fighting.

 

Oh, and they made the turtles gay. Did I mention that? Gay brothers!

 

This film takes place after the events of the first three films, supposedly, which is kind of confusing, considering this one is animated and the other three aren’t. I guess it doesn’t really matter, but it establishes why the group isn’t together. Leonardo is down in Central America, fighting for the people in poverty or something like that, when he is visited by April O’ Neil in an effort to convince him to come back. Donatello and Michelangelo and working shitty jobs, an IT operator and pizza delivery guy, and Raphael is always tired, because he is also a vigilante known as Nightwatcher. Leonardo comes back to join them, which happens to coincide with demon things being released onto the city. If all the demons aren’t taken care of, there will be worse demons on the way. Remember Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed? Imagine that plot, but with the Ninja Turtles. They fight bad guys, they eat pizza, do ninja stuff, and there’s an awesome fight between Leonardo and Raphael on the rainy rooftops, but they eventually put their differences behind them to fight bad guys. Did I mention Casey Jones is there to help? Well, he is! So the good guys win, the bad guys lose, Splinter is their mentor, and all the turtles are doing flips and jumping off of things. Success!

 

There’s something physically impossible about April’s physique in this movie…….impossibly SEXY! HEY OH!

 

This is the best installment in the TMNT franchise since the original film. Maybe that’s not saying much, but everyone seems to have fond memories of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze. But you know what? That movie fucking sucked. I don’t know why people remember that movie being awesome, because it wasn’t. The first film is pretty dark, and isn’t too cartoony, Raphael gets the shit kicked out of him, Casey Jones is a badass, Splinter gets captured, all good things. Secret of the Ooze had Vanilla Ice, a shitty plot, even more cartoony, and no Casey Jones as well as no Corey Feldman voicing Donatello. The third film had Corey Feldman again, and Casey Jones came back, but the entire plot sucks and is terrible. This installment had pretty cool action, considering it was animated, it wasn’t too silly, and the look of the film was a lot darker and more similar looking to the original black and white comics. That’s something most people forget, is that this comic was originally black and white, and started in Northampton, MA, and it wasn’t until the animated TV show that all the turtles got different colors and apparently lived in New York City. Don’t believe me? I have some comics where they mention Northampton by name. BY NAME, I SAY! There’s also a scene at the end where you get to see Shredder’s helmet up on a shelf, and dumb little kids won’t get that reference. Oh, and the fight between Raphael and Leonardo might be one of the best scenes of anything related to the turtles. Although they have had their differences and there has always been tension between the two, it was typically a lot more subtle, that to see it come to fruition in such a big way was really awesome. As embarrassing as it was, I remember gripping the arms of the seat I was sitting in really tightly, because I didn’t believe these turtles would be beating the shit out of each other. Then again, I might have just been excited because of the pizza.

 

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Starship Troopers (1997)

December 6, 2010 7 Comments



And here we go again, another blast from the past. Well, by past, I mean blast from the 90′s. At the time this movie was filming, it was estimated to have cost somewhere between $120 and $140 million dollars, which would have put it as the highest budget of any film until “Titanic”, whose budget was $200 million, got released later that year. If it cost that much money, it just has to be good, right?! Well, that’s the tricky part. Wanna know what else was tricky? The fact that Denise Richards was in this movie, and I kept hearing about how she was making some movie where she kissed that girl from “Scream” and “Party of Five” and, guess what, THIS WASN’T IT! I was very disappointed that this wasn’t the VHS I should have spent money on to rent on a Friday night.



HOLY SHIT, THIS GIANT FUCKING BUG IS GONNA EAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!

 

This movie was made in the 90′s and was science fiction, so, yup, you guessed it, it takes place in the “not too distant future”, and apparently we are under attack by giant bugs. The technology exists to give people tests that prove which branch of the military they should go into, and three friends find themselves in different areas. One goes to the much higher level of intelligence, one becomes a pilot to transport the kinds of people who the last friend is, the stupid as shit infantry. They promise to be friends forever, but you get the feeling that something might get in the way of that. There are scenes of basic training, scenes of alien bug fighting, and supposedly at the end they mention that they captured a bug that will mean the end of the war. I don’t really want to waste my time with everything in between, but Denise Richards dies and, once again, you do NOT see her naked.



HOLY SHIT, THE DEAD BUGS ARE GETTING PILED SO HIGH THAT THE ALIVE BUGS WILL CLIMB THE DEAD BUGS AND THEN EAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!

 

The first time I saw this movie I thought it was fucking terrible. But, since it’s been over ten years since I was disappointed with the realization that this movie wasn’t “Wild Things”, and since a lot of people talk about this movie being awesome, and since Paige was taking too long to get ready, I decided to give this movie another shot. The verdict this time? It was okay. I understand now that it was supposed to be really cheesy and over-the-top, whereas before I thought it was just bad. Now that I have more of an appreciation for films like that, I could enjoy it from a much better perspective. There were guns, explosions, boobs (that weren’t attached to Denise Richards), and violence. When it comes to mindless action, this movie is just as good as most others, but the question is, why the fuck did they spend $140 million on something that was mocking a genre?! I just don’t get it. Sure, the CGI was good and all the effects still held up over time, but this film didn’t even make it’s money back. It is generally considered a flop that just happened to get lucky with whatever sort of cult following it has, but still, was it really worth it?



HOLY SHIT NEIL PATRICK HARRIS, OF COURSE I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW MORE! SUCH AS, HOW DO I NET GET THE SHIT EATEN OUT OF ME BY GIANT ALIEN BUGS!?

 

Something about this film that was mildly interesting was the way it seemed to be aware of itself, mock itself, while also using segments of propaganda in similar ways to how it would have been used during WW2 without it being too confusing. No matter who you were to talk to that was involved with the making of this film, I don’t think any of them would make claims that this movie stood for something other than what it was, and would deny the existence of any sort of deeper meaning. However, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t successfully try to make the characters, as well as the viewers, just downright fucking hate the bugs. With scenes encouraging children to stomp on every bug they saw, to dissecting young bugs in high school to try to learn their weaknesses, to having characters address the camera/viewer directly, it really made you want to join them in their fight. Lucky for us, we aren’t actually at war with alien bugs, but still. Johnny Rico, played by Casper Van Dien, lets us know that “A citizen accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic, of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not.” The viewers are all civilians, and this film tries to encourage us to be citizens. Also, the only rule we need to know is “Everyone fights. No one quits. You don’t do your job, I’ll shoot you myself.” Well, the only rule according to Michael Ironside. Sorry, got excited quoting this movie, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, it was an expensive attempt at satire that ended up just having lots of blood, laughable dialogue, and a lack of Denise Richards’ boobs.

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Daredevil (2003)

December 5, 2010 5 Comments



Maybe I am just a little too optimistic when it comes to comic book movies, or maybe I just love me some Daredevil a little too much, but I always defend this movie when people talk shit on it. Obviously the first time I walked out of the theater after having seen it, I knew it was bad. I think everybody knew this movie was bad. And in all honesty, there aren’t that many reasons why it should be considered good. The fact that this movie had a Director’s Cut released, however, I think proves that there were only the best intentions when it came to making this movie. Also, anytime someone talks shit on it, there are two other more recent comic book movies that are terrible, those two films being “Ghost Rider” and “Elektra”, with the former being just a little bit better than the latter. At least when Ghost Rider is riding his flame motorcycle and whipping chains all over the place, it’s kind of badass to look at. Even though Jennifer Garner was running around in skimpy bondage gear all through her film, it was just so fucking shitty to watch, and Jennifer Garner, a.k.a. Duck Face, doesn’t do anything for me. And believe it or not, yes, I am a heterosexual male who would rather watch  a skeleton riding a flaming motorcycle than a girl in skimpy bondage gear. And before anyone leaves a comment about it, “Sounds like the motorcycle isn’t the only thing that’s flaming”.



Blind, but still has an eye for fashion. Also, sometimes he had red (weird orange) hair, other times, not so much. WTF guys?!

 

Matt Murdock, played by Ben Affleck,  is the son of an arguably washed up boxer living in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York. An accident blinds him, but heightens all of his other senses, giving him near superhuman abilities. When his father refuses to throw a fight, he is murdered, and Matt spends the rest of his life making sure that justice is dished out accordingly, both with his vigilantism as Daredevil at night, as well as his career as a lawyer. The Kingpin, played by Michael Clarke Duncan, is the head of organized crime in the city, and hires a hitman, Bullseye, played by Colin Farrell, who “never misses” his target. In a hit gone wrong, Bullseye kills the father of Elektra Natchios, played by Duck Face, who is Matt Murdock’s love interest. Through bad circumstances, Elektra blames Daredevil for her father’s death and goes after him, and then there is this big rooftop three-way fight kind of thing with Bullseye, Elektra, and Daredevil all kind of fighting each other. Bullseye kills Elektra in the process, but Daredevil critically wounds Bullseye and leaves him for dead as he goes after the Kingpin. Once the battle ends, Daredevil is put in the position to kill the person responsible for his father’s death, but instead chooses to let the police deal with it and let justice be handled through the court system, rather than street justice.



So leathery…so horny…the costumes, I mean

 

I wanted to point out the bad things about this movie first, but it’s kind of hard to pinpoint all of them. That fight on the playground between Elektra and matt Murdock? Yeah, pretty ridiculous, I’ll give you that. The whole thing just seemed rushed. Once Marvel saw how successful the Spider-Man movie was, that was released the year prior, it seemed like they just picked a superhero name from a hat to see who got the next film. Once Daredevil was chosen, they just chose some actors who were “hot” at the time, rather than seeing how they all worked together. This was just NOT a role for Jennifer Garner, but her show “Alias” was doing well, so they threw her in there. Ben Affleck provided the big “star” name, and he really wasn’t THAT terrible, he just wasn’t really all that good. Same thing with Michael Clarke Duncan, he didn’t do a bad job, he just seemed kind of out of place. Colin Farrell was pretty awesome in how insanely over the top his performance was, which Bullseye pretty much is. He just lacked that insanity that the character has, so he was more laughable than he was intimidating. He could have said all the same lines, but if there was a little bit more of an edge to it, or were there a few changes here or there, he would have pulled it off, but instead he just heightened the overall sense of silliness to the whole film.



Wait…Kingpin is black?! Bullseye has an actual bullseye on his face?! WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO MY WORLD.

 

Now, let’s try some good things. The director’s cut of this film has 25 extra minutes, mostly with courtroom investigating. That has always been a big part of Daredevil/Matt Murdock, which is that he is short-sighted (LOL he’s blind). He focuses on only one neighborhood to protect, and is pretty self-centered as well as a little egotistical. These personality quirks were demonstrated a lot more in those scenes. As far as the “action” scenes, or any time he is jumping around, there are quite a few similarities to images from the comics that seemed almost shot for shot, so you can tell that the people behind the movie had actually opened the book before. Speaking of opening up the comics, I can’t think of another single comic book movie that referenced as many important creators involved with that character than this film. Stan Lee has his cameo, and Kevin Smith, who wrote a Daredevil storyline, played someone named “Kirby”, named after Jack Kirby, who is as important to Marvel’s history as Stan Lee. The names Everett, Quesada, Colan, Romita, Kane, Miller, Mack, and Bendis are used, all of these people being tied to writing/creating/illustrating Daredevil through the years. Frank Miller also has a cameo in the film, so that’s another one. Ultimately, I feel this film had good intentions, was had talented people involved with it, but everything was just rushed to try to cash in on the Spider-Man success, and hopefully one day we see another attempt at a Daredevil movie. And you’re right, the theatrical version does suck, and the director’s cut is a little bit better, but this film isn’t going to be winning any awards for anything other than it’s shittiness.


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Screamers (1995)

November 30, 2010 Leave a Comment

 

This is another film that I have vague memories of from when I was younger, despite having never actually seen it. I kind of remember the trailer and thinking “Oh cool! That is kind of like Tremors…but COOLER!”, and never actually saw it. Cut to a few years later and the internet existing, and thought that this movie was actually called “Sirens”. There already was a movie called “Sirens”, that was a little different, and I’ll let you figure out which one it is I reviewed. One involves robots that kill people from underground and make a screaming sound, and the other features Hugh Grant, accompanied by a naked Elle Macpherson and a naked Portia de Rossi, because their characters are sirens for a famous artist or something. Can you guess which film is which?! Good luck!

 

Awwwww, it’s a cute little dinosaur robot thing

 

In the not too distant future (fucking great, another one of these movies), there was some sort of war between people and it was somehow centered around nuclear weapons? Or something? I don’t know, but they are on a different planet are there is a lot of sand. One of the groups built robots that live in the sand that kill the bad guys, but the guys who made them lost control of them and now everyone is scared of them. For some reason, one dude goes off in search of the warehouse that built them in hopes of finding out how to stop them and get off the planet. When they get to the warehouse, they learn that the sand robots were just phase 1 of a bunch of different robots, going all the way up to phase 3 and 4. The newer ones look just like people! Whoa! They are robots but when they get pissed and blow up, they still scream. So some shit happens with robots and explosions, eventually the guy who was investigating what was happening gets all “WHOA SHIT, GET ME OFFA THIS ROBOT PLANET!” and takes some chick he wants to bone with him. He eventually finds a spaceship that will take him off the planet but then the chick turns out to be a screamer. And I don’t mean in  a sexy way, I mean in the robot way. So he fights her or something, but eventually he gets on the plane to head back to Earth, only to reveal that there is another screaming robot traveling with him! DAMMIT!

 

DAMN BITCH, YOU NEED A ROBOT DENTIST

 

Great, just what we needed, another sci-fi film that has allegories to a nuclear holocaust and how cultures deal with the aftermath. Oh, and it takes places somewhere with lots of sand? EVEN BETTER! This movie just reminds me of a term my professor used all the time in a course in college, “cyber punk”. Apparently in the 80′s and 90′s, everyone had this wacked out idea of how important computers would be in the future, so all this dystopian garbage has this aesthetic to it that is just Blade Runner, but shitty. That’s pretty much what the first half of this movie is, but when the idea of who/what are these robots, that’s when it gets pretty cool. The bad part was you had to sit through 45 minutes of crap that was supposed to mimic our worst fears of the future, which was just a snoozefest.

 

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Fire in the Sky (1993)

November 25, 2010 1 Comment

 

This movie scared thew shit right out of me back in junior high, without ever even having seen it. I was watching some daytime show, Jerry Springer or Montell Jordan or who knows what, and they were talking about alien abductions. In between the commercial segments they showed clips from this movie, in particular, there was a scene where a guy had his eye held open while an alien drilled some fucking drill or whatever into it. Scary stuff! For as much as I loved The X Files when it was on, aliens scared the shit out of me. I remember that for my birthday one year I had gotten a lot more money than anticipated and needed to blow it on garbage, so I bought this weird little alien statue that held shiny blue marble in it’s hand. I kept it on my windowsill, but some nights I got scared that alien could see it from space and would abduct me, so I moved it away from the window. I partially blame this movie for those fears. Oh, and me being a pussy.

Reminds me of my weekend

A group of guys are all trying to clarify a “story” at a bar of things that took place that night. When local authorities show up and they start telling their story, it sounds questionable, at best. These men were all in the woods chopping down trees when they saw a “fire in the sky”, which they obviously investigated. One of the guys got out of the car and was struck by some bright light that threw him back a ways and apparently killed him. The guys freak out and drive back into town, and surprisingly, no one believes them. Authorities search the woods and find no sign of the supposed dead guy. Everyone goes through lie detector tests, and there’s no proof of these guys lying. One night, one of the men gets a call in the middle of the night, and it’s the guy who they left in the woods. He recounts the events of what happened, which mostly involved being on a spaceship, being held captive and tortured. He eventually made his way back to Earth, and tried to put it all behind him. That’s basically it. The end!

It looked like all the aliens were played by weird old men

There wasn’t really much to this movie, it was more like an episode of Law & Order. It was almost like that episode of The X Files called “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space”, but not even. That episode was about two people interpreting the same event in different ways. While the authorities were implying that things didn’t happen the way they claimed they happened, but the audience knew there were aliens and that the guy was obviously shot with a laser beam from the sky. And then when he finally showed up and we learned what happened, it was just “Oh okay, the aliens were jerks who were mean to you, but now you are home”, so who cares? This was a movie based on a book that was supposedly based on a true story. I have really lost a lot of faith in anything based on real events, so I also wasn’t really sure how much of that stuff I could be interested in. I believe that a guy existed, and he either was, or thinks he was abducted, but he is home now, so who cares? There are plenty of people out there who think they have been abducted, but I guess if you think it happened in the 70′s, they’ll make a movie about it.

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Catfish (2010)

October 14, 2010 1 Comment

 

THIS MOVIE IS NOT A THRILLER. THIS FILM IS NOT A HORROR FILM. DO I NEED TO TELL YOU AGAIN, OR HAS IT SUNK IN ENOUGH? That’s the most important information that everyone needs to know about this film. Considering the success of “Paranormal Activity”, it’s not that hard to imagine that Hollywood would be responsible for another fake documentary about a guy finding a girl on Facebook and tracking her down, only to be surprised. That’s why you should never, EVER meet someone from the internet. They will most likely end up being a psycho who become obsessed with you and move in with you and get a dog with you. Well, maybe that’s just one scenario, but still. Oh, and don’t worry about spoilers with this one. It’s not a horror film with a huge twist or anything, but I still won’t give away the ending.

 

Careful, Yaniv! You might be talking to a psycho!

 

Yaniv Schulman is a photographer in New York who has been receiving painted versions of his photos from an 8-year-old girl in Michigan. He is impressed with the quality of the paintings and seems to be flattered by the amount of attention his photography is getting from this girl. This relationship, which, mind you, is NOT creepy, no matter how this description sounds, starts being documented by Yaniv’s friends. The interested spreads to not only this girl, but also to her mom and to her older, hot model sister. Yaniv starts having phone calls with the mom as well as hot daughter, and things get quite intimate with the hot sister. Their relationship develops into pet names, inappropriate texting, and semi-nude photoshops. One night, the hot sister, also known as Abby, starts sending Yaniv acoustic versions of songs he requests. and he is blown away at her talent. After some internet sleuthing, Yaniv discovers that Abby is just finding acoustic versions of all the requests online and sends them, pretending they are her. Yaniv and the film crew decide the only way to get to the bottom of what’s going on is by going to Abby’s house when they are in the area for a videoshoot, and that’s when the mysteries unravel!

 

Probably should have photoshopped out some of that chest hair. JUST SAYIN’!

 

Like I said, NOT A THRILLER. We don’t find out that Abby is a psycho killer or anything. Also, it’s not like things are “normal normal normal normal BOOM HOLY SHIT PSYCHO STUFF!!!”. They allude to what’s going on a few times, or maybe I could just pick up on it, but it’s not some surprise that kicks you in the balls. Sure, the “twist” is strange, and somewhat interesting, but it is not at all scary. I think that between “Paranormal Activity” and movies like “The Last Exorcism”, everyone kind of expects every documentary looking film to be fake. I mean, how could weird shit actually happen to real people? IT’S INSANE ISN’T IT?! If you can completely ignore the advertising of this films, then you might be able to enjoy it. I think that because I spent so much time expecting something scary, I didn’t get to thoroughly analyze it to the extent that I analyze other films. I mean, it definitely wasn’t bad, but there wasn’t really anything distinct about the quality of it. If the curiosity is really driving you nuts, I’m sure you can Google it, or maybe try to see it for free, or you can just email me I guess and I will ruin it for you.

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