20. X-Men Last Stand 2/5 - I'm not going lie, I did enjoy parts of this movie. That's the thing there are some good parts but it feels so disconnected that it's nearly impossible to feel for the characters, and most of those parts are the action scenes. The SFX was really good but it's a shame not a lot of it was put to good use. I mean none of the scenes really top the awesomeness of the nightcrawler scene in the beginning or the tornado jet scene of X2. There are some nice mutant moments such as the Juggernaunt running through the walll scene or the bridge scene but all in all same old same old for me. The script is just bad, there are some great ideas but the execution is horrible. I think the problem is they took three established comic stories and then try to infuse them all together, and stray too far from the source material but didn't go far enough. What I mean is, these three stories were not written into one big story but as if they just took each of them and just threw them in and loosely tie them all together by using characters that were barely in teh script and just use at oppertune times to keep the script rolling. For example the Dark Pheonix story is completely changed except for the actual concept but the first forty-60 minutes really just focus on that and then all of a sudden she disappears really into the background till the very end. The cure story line is merely just an excuse to start the war and introduce angel, it barely impacts anything and they dont' even use it to touch the philosphical questions that X1 and X2 usually do. And then the war was so unbelievably pathetic it encompassed two scenes and then it was done. The writers were so unbelievably lazy, it'd be like there writing a scene and then instead of trying a creative way of getting to next part they just pull some mutant out of there ass use him for 5 minutes and forget about him. None of the characters have any character development what so ever, there pretty much exactly the same as they are in the beginning and end. But to give the actors/actresses credit, they somehow manage to get some mileage out of the script they were given and kelsy grammar was awesome.. The movie is mediocre with some enjoyable scenes, just wait for the rental...
21. Prairie Home Companion - 4/5 - This was a great, heart-warming film. Now I'm not very familiar with Altman's work outside of Mash (1970) and Dr. T and the Women (2000), Mash being great and Dr. T and the Women being all right. So on to the review... First off this is an ensemble piece and this is where it's most successful since every character introduced you care about. Every character is unique with there idiosyncrasies. The movie moves right along as you go through various character arcs, and learn all about there little world as you see it torn away from them. There are couple of things that for me kind of slow down the movie, first off was the angel, I just didn't dig the angel that much she just kind of did nothing but walk around and slow the movie down. Also the ending gets really slow since there was no focus on it till the end when they needed to wrap things up. But the ending is very heart-warming and nice. What cacn I say, it's a solid movie, that's very old school funny.
22. Fast and the Furious 3- 3.5/5 - I, truely believe any good action movie needs to have a great opening sequence Matrix, X2, and more have one and Fast and the Furious 3 delievars with a great race scene in the beginning. Let's not be mistaken folks, Fast and the Furious is trashy B-Movie cinema but it's entertaining and that's all that matters. From what I remember of FF2, it was disappointing and took itself far too seriously which made it laughable and if I remember there were homosexual undertones. So it was nice to see FF3 go in the completely opposite direction which is what the opening scene demonstrates. What I like about this movie is the complete over-the-top route this movie took with the races and scenes. The races are great, there balls to the wall fun, and completely ridiculous. Also the cinematography for this movie is great which makes the races really thrilling. But this movie has it share of flaws. I really like the film star Lucas Black I thought he was great in both Friday Night Lights and Jarhead but here he's given nothing more to do that look bad ass. One of the film's flaws is the story, though this movie is trashy cinema, the story in this feels so poor, and just forced. It's like it's just there to fill the remaining minutes in between the racing. Another is the racing itself, it so over-the-top by like halfway through the movie they kind of shot there wad and the racing gets somewhat boring. But through-out the movie they manage to keep that kinetic energy rolling so if your a man you'll enjoy the movie the whole way though and the cameo at the end was a nice touch. So if your bored on a saturday night and your in blockbuster and see this, give it a rental.
23. Nacho Libre - 1.5/5 - Crappy movie about absolutely nothing, the movie goes absolutely no where just like Napoleon Dynomite. I barely even remember it
24. Superman Returns - 2/5 - My worst fears were confirmed with this movie, it's the sequal that was 20 years too late. Don't get me wrong I absolutely love the original Richard Donner Superman and eagerly await his cut of the film with the new DVD release, but this movie kind of pissed on everything I love about film and art which is the constant emergence of new ideas and taking things to different places. Though I often will bring up my distain for things about Batman Begins, I believe I've always firmly said I enjoyed it and respected it because it was something new and went somewhere new. Superman Returns is just retreading water.
First off the entire look and style of the film goes completely hand in hand with the Richard Donner films right down to the beginning credits, music, and even Marlon Brando as Jor-El. Though it feels far too polished to the point of being highly stylized and fake, unlike the original Richard Donner Version. Then let's move on to characters, I'm not going lie I would rank Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman over this, why? BEcause I actually gave a damn about the characters. This movie takes for granted the fact there dealing with characters that are so highly known and assumes we'll immediately care about them. One of the things that makes Superman appealing at all is the duality of Clark Kent and Superman, something that was actually covered if I remembered in the Donner version was that duality, that Kal-El uses the Clark KEnt persona to find his humanity, Clark Kent in this big screen adaption serves as nothing more than an excuse for comic relief and is there just for the hell of it. The super-man character has basically no character development at all, except for the scenes where he's creepily stalking Lois Lane and her kid. I find it funny that the only character I really could give a damn about was Cyclops, he has some dept to him, he seem to genuinely care about Lois and was caught in a ****-storm he couldn't of predicted. ANd then there's Lex Luthor, people ***** and moan about Hackman's Luthor but it went with Richard Donnor tone and what not, and was very enjoyable. LEt me first say Kevin Spacey Luthor is enjoyable but it feel so rehash of Hackman's Luthor, that the entire movie feels like been there and done that, and god... why are they still treating luthor like a moron. The litte kid was just hilarious in a bad way, it was so cheezy and predictable. And god, that whole ending drags so incredibly long... Another huge problem with the movie is how unbelieavably ****ing anti-climatic it is. Every scene has these long tension build ups which fail miserably because it was so predictable how superman was going come in and save htem, there was no tension cuz you knew superman would save the day, and you knew superman would never die by kryptonite. Part of what make superman interesting is his duality and the morality of others, none of which was touched on really which made it kind of boring actually. Also the FINALE SO WEAK! He lifts a ****ing land-mass at the end? Come on...
But on to the good and why I give it a 2, besides all those things, it really is well-made. It's unbelievably beautiful picture I must say, some of the shots are just like visual poetry. I also grew to dig the suit and the effects are top notch, along with music. Also the guy who played Perry was absolutely terrific. And the whole movie really is well made but saddly it feels like a rehash of Donner's sequal, and with the poor characterzation of Superman you really can't feel his plight with Lois Lane.
25. Scanner Darkly - 2/5- This is sad because I've been looking forward to this movie for a long time, it was suppose to be THE PHILLIP K. DICK MOVIE EVERYONE WAS WAITING FOR but intend Linklater just turned it into a a hour and half reflection on his drug experiences. It's like Linklater was looking for an excuse to make a movie about druggies and to try out his lovely rotoscoping techique. But on to the plot first...
The plot of this movie is in the future America has lost the war on drugs and there's a new highly addictive drug on the block called Substance D, so they've set up this Big Brother type organization with these agents called Scanners, who go deep undercover and spy on druggies to find the top dog. Keanu Reeves character is a scanner but he's also a druggie, which side is he on? This plot sounds awesome right? Too bad 3/4s of the movie is just episodic cliche druggie antics. Maybe it's because I have a couple of pot-head friends, and essentially this what they act like, it's like Linklater just went made another stoner film, and even if I didn't have friends, you immediately know who these characters are, they fit very specific stereotypical druggies, so there was no need for exposition, you could cut out I'd say 70 minutes of the 100 minute movie and still be able to perfectly understand the movie. That's the main problem with the movie is, it was advertised and even has the name of a sci-fi flick but it's more like a druggie film if anything. The coolest bits of the films are the sci-fi parts such as the opening speech, the climax, and the ending. Everything else is completely useless.
As for style and camera techique, the rotoscoping is completely useless here except for the one or two scenes of people having delusions, I have a strong suspicion that the reason they used rotoscoping was for the gimmick of it(but I hear waking life is great). I mean there's nothing more truthful than the eye of a camera to a script, I mean if this movie could of been filmed regularly and would not lose anythign the process, and it truely would be a forgetable flick.
The acting in the movie is solid enough, and it's the actors that keep this movie afloat, I mean I'd be lying if I said the druggie adventures in this movie weren't entertaining and funny, but by the time you get to the climax it's become old-hat, shallow, and down-right unsatisfying. Also the ending runs FAR too long, and it has to do with "changing-gears", you can not do this, I'm sure there are some movies that do it successfully but most movies, it throws the audience off guard, feels like the movie already ended and where seeing a really long epilogue that should end. After a movie of meaningless druggie episodes where treated to a great climatic sci-fi scene, and a 10-20 minute sci-fi/thriller ending, which just becomes really boring because by this time you now want leave because that's not what the movie was at all and this feels tacked on. But in the end, decent acting, good concepts/themes, along with some decent sci fi keep the flick a float enough to give it a 2.
26. Clerks 2 - 4/5 - I had my reservations about this movie but in the end it turned out great. It follows the "French Connection Sequal" formula as I call it. Which is the first movie was about the life of a Clerk, I mean we did get an insight into the characters but the focus was the life of a clerk, and it was very funny. The sequal on the other hand is a focus on the characters with the life of a clerk as the backdrop which is perfectly fine, it's this very subtle shift which makes Clerks so successful, it gives us something different while not betraying spirit of the movie, but with that said I hope there isn't anotehr one and I'll explain at the end why.
It'd be pointless to mention anything about visual style or things like that with a Kevin Smith film, he says it himself he's more into the writing side than anything else so this review will focus mostly on the plot. The story takes off 10 years after the first one, the clerks convience store has burn down and now there working at a fast-food restraunt, one, Randal, is perfectly content with life, the other, Dante, is not and is moving to Florida with his soon-to-be wife to live the life he always wanted or so the thought. It kind of a "25th Hour" type movie since it chronicles the last day of Dante Hicks last day as a Clerk. This is why I love the movie, it's a deep character study of what america would consider a failure of a man and how he dealing with that.
As for the comedy, it's HYSTERICAL! All the characters are in top-form and I love the evolution of a lot of the jokes especially with Jay and Silent Bob. Now my only real complaint with the movie is some of the acting is wooden and crappy, it's few and far between, and it might have to do with on-the-nose dialogue at some parts but it's enough to drag it down ot a 4 instead of an out-right 5.
So at the end of the movie your left with a character who's arc is completed and deeper insights into these character and a nice feel-good ending. So that's why I don't think I'd want a sequal becacuse even with the French Connection, you've covered all the ground can cover, you covered there profession and you cover who they are as people, and you have concluded there arc, to do another one would cheapen it.
I own Nacho Libre
