Posts Tagged ‘movie review’

My “Quantum of Solace” Review

November 14, 2008


When I saw Casino Royale I fucking hated it. It was completely different than any other James Bond movie. It didn’t make sense that M was played by Judi Dench when it was supposed to be Bond’s first mission. I hated that the main focus of the movie was a fucking card game. And I wasn’t sure if I even liked Daniel Craig.

Then I watched Casino Royale again a few months later and fucking loved it. It was completely different than any other James Bond movie. M was played by Judi Dench, but it was considered a reboot a.k.a. we do whatever the fuck we want. The card game made sense, and it was less about the cards and more about the players. And the story was pretty good once I understood it.

I had no doubts going into Quantum of Solace that it was going to kick ass. And right from the start it does. The highlight of this movie is no doubt the action, and without making the story suffer. Being a sequel played well in it’s favor also. This way there was no extra explaining to do, we knew where we left off. Le Chiffre, working for a large organization, was killed by Mr. White who works for the same organization. Vesper, Bond’s love interest, betrays him and gives the money to Mr. White. She drowns and Bond hunts down Mr. White and shoots him in the leg. Quantum of Solace picks up immediately after that point.

I found the story in this movie to be a little easier to follow than Royale’s. It is half a revenge story and half a spy adventure story. IMDB Plot Summary. It was written by a few people, one of which is Paul Haggis who’s work I admire. Quantum was empty of any quips that have made Bond so famous in the past, and I don’t see that as a bad thing. This is a very serious Bond and I think it worked very well for this episode. If you consider this film to be a part of Bond’s entire career, then you can see it is a dark time for him. A lot of complaints have been that it is too dark, but the story calls for it. I won’t be surprised or put off to see some of that cheeky dialogue of his back in the next film.

Dominic Greene was the main villain in Quantum. He tied together the paths of Bond and the new Bond girl, Camille. Camille was out for revenge on a man who killed her family when she was a child, and Greene was doing business with the man. Bond was following the organization and Greene was his major lead. Bond and Camille had similar motives and worked together to get to Greene.

Daniel Craig was just fine as Bond. I don’t see him as the “BEST BOND EVER!” as some have surely said, but he is definitely not bad. I have to see him make a couple more movies to consider him for that title. Olga Kurylenko as Camille was very good. She is at the absolute beginning of her career, and this should give her a good leg up to stardom. The rest of the cast was also well performed. There were no over the top villainous performances that you may find past Bond films, it was all very real performances, and very realistic motives.

I was not the least bit disappointed by Quantum Of Solace. It delivered through and through.

The only bad part of this movie was the theme song that was completely created by Jack White. I still remain a huge Jack White fan, but this was just an awful mistake hooking up with Alicia Keys. She is great on her own, and he is great on his own, but together it just didn’t work right.

I give Quantum of Solace an 8 out of 10.

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My “The Forbidden Kingdom”/”Forgetting Sarah Marshall” Double Review

April 19, 2008

On Friday I wanted to go to the movies, so I called my friend to go with me. See, my friend and I both wanted to go to the movies. I am a huge Apatow fan so of course I wanted to see “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”. But My friend is a huge fan of Jackie Chan and Jet Li and “The Forbidden Kingdom” movie, to him, was the equivalent of an hour and a half long orgasm. And when that orgasm is done, the tip of his penis would be very very VERY sensitive. So we compromised: we would catch “The Forbidden Kingdom” at 7:15 pm, and then catch “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” at 9:45 pm. It turned out to be a hell of a night at the movies.

3.5 out of 5

Going into “The Forbidden Kingdom” I was a little skeptical at how much I would enjoy the film. Before going to the movie I checked Rotten Tomatoes and it had a 65%, which means if worst comes to worst it can still be more good than not. My experience with Jackie Chan is mostly from the “Rush Hour” movies. I can’t say I’ve seen or remember having seen any other of his movies. So going in to this movie it was safe to say that I was keeping an open mind, as I had not seen him in any movies of this type where he is really in his arena. The only Jet Li movie I have seen is Kiss of The Dragon and I guess I enjoyed that.

The movie starts off with an American teenager living in Boston. You start off finding out he is a big Kung-Fu fan by movie posters and his visit to a Chinese shop. The movie spends little time concentrating on this teenager in Boston and gets right to the point of where he gets sent back in time which I found to be a good thing. The mythology to the story was pretty cool, it included this warrior named The King Monkey and his staff and a prophecy of a traveler who would bring it back to him. When Jet Li and Jackie Chan first meet they have a cool fight scene. I am no kung-fu movie expert so I can’t get technical, but I can say that the moves were awesome and the way the scene, and all other fight scenes, were shot was great.

The biggest thing that stuck out to me was how much better I like Jackie Chan in this type of movie than any of his other types of roles such as Rush Hour or any other “Chinese guy in America” roles that get overused. He just fit so perfectly in this role as a drunken fighter from ancient China, and it was pretty refreshing to see him in that role.

The problems with the film were not as standout as the good things about the film. There was some cheesy dialogue here and there. The one part I disliked most was the group of kids that the American teenager had to face. That situation has been played out so many times that it was so predicable what would happen in the end within the first five minutes of the movie. And, of course, the end of the movie (not a spoiler) could not be complete without a Chinese man saying an American saying in his funny “ching chao cho” accent.

“The Forbidden Kingdom” was a very entertaining film overall. It is worth heading out to the big screen for a fun time at the movies.

After getting out of “The Forbidden Kingdom” my friend and I had about 45 minutes to spare. I ran to the snack stand and grabbed a pretzel and a soda and then waited for the movie to begin. This was REALLY the movie I came to see:

4.5 out of 5

There was no doubt that I was pumped for this flick. I mean it’s got Judd Apatow’s name attached to it so it’s bound to be comedy gold. Oh yeah, there was that one movie we shall not mention coughDrillbit Taylorcough, but other than that he’s put out some awesome stuff. I also loved Jason Segel in “Knocked Up” so I was looking forward to seeing how this guy did with writing his own flick. I was also prepared for disappointment for some reason, and now that I have seen “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” I want to kick my own ass for thinking such a thing.

Right from the start of this film when Segel’s character, Peter, shakes his wiener at his girlfriend Sarah and it makes the smacking noises as it hits his legs, I knew this movie was going to fucking rule the rest of my night. Then immediately after that came the full frontal nudity shot of Segel and that somehow kept me laughing. This film just kept going and going and didn’t stop. The first thing I thought about while watching this is, just like “Superbad”, this movie makes you laugh every thirty seconds.

I never thought I would get so much enjoyment out of a man being so sad. Segel did an amazing job at not getting too old with the sad thing, he was pretty much crying or frowning through 2/3rds of the flick. I believe this man should win an Oscar for such a performance and be the first man in comedy to win at the Oscars.

Another awesome character was the new British pop-star boyfriend of Sarah Marshall’s. He just had such a funny way of thinking, at times you mostly hated him but then there were parts where you loved the guy. His goal as he said was to just have sex with everyone and anyone he wanted, and the short sex scene with him and Kristen Bell(HOT!) was hilarious AND hot.

This movie made me laugh so much that, even if there were any, I can’t recall anything bad about the movie. I am not calling this a perfect movie, but there is no denying it is funny as fucking fuck. One of my favorite parts is the whole Dracula Rock Opera that Segel’s character was working on. When he performs that song it is the funniest thing I have ever heard. Not only is it hilarious, because he is singing it with a Dracula accent, but the words are actually GOOD. In context, and I believe he actually says that in the movie, it makes great sense. What’s even better is that Segel actually wrote those songs, including that of Marshall’s pop-star boyfriend “I Want to Be Inside You”.

There was also characters for most of the normal Apatow bunch that appear in his movies. Joe Rudd played a stoned out surfer who just was so burnt out. Jonah Hill was a host at a Hotel Restaurant and was funny as usual as the obsessed fan of Marshall’s pop-star boyfriend. Bill Hader, one of my favorite people, played Peter’s brother in law and his sort-of emotional guide. Mila Kunis was a new add to the bunch and her character was the overly tan love interest of Segel’s character.

There is no reason at ALL why you should not go see this movie. There is no doubt that you will laugh your ass off the whole time. Go…NOW!

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My Doomsday Review

March 31, 2008

The early trailers for this movie looked promising to me. I like a movie with a chick who kicks ass, and Rhona Mitra as the lead looked pretty hott with that sword. Then the plot comes out: a virus, called the Reaper Virus, starts spreading and eventually leads to a quarantine of Scotland. Then survivors are seen and a team is sent in to find the cure. Sound familiar?My speculations going into the movie was that the story, dialogue, and anything relating would be recycled garbage, and that the action would be the only entertaining parts of the movie. I was pretty much right. Anytime they were explaining what happened or people were talking it was just boring. There was also this terrible music, I think it was partly the theater’s fault, but the music was louder than the talking and it got really annoying quickly.

When the action finally started it got entertaining. Not the best action I’ve seen, but it was still fun for what it was. The main female character, Sinclair, was pretty awesome the whole time. The crazy bad guy with the Mohawk was another entertaining factor.

The people that were infected were really nothing new either, all bubbly face and bloody and crazy. JUST SHOOT EM IN THE HEAD!

Another thing that I didn’t like was Sinclair had this stupid little eyeball thing. She lost her eyeball as a kid in the beginning of the movie, and now it’s some weird camera that retains its eyeball form. She can take it out of her eye socket as she wishes. It just annoyed the fuck out of me that someone thought that was a cool idea:

“She loses her eyeball right? Follow me guys, follow me here…so in the FUTURE, she can just pull it out of her head and place it on the floor FOLLOW ME GUYS! She has a screen on her watch to see what’s going on right? When she’s done using it, she just POPS THAT FUCKER BACK IN THERE!”

This movie accomplished what it needed to MOSTLY, which was entertain us with a chick kicking ass. I suggest only go see it if you have nothing else to do. I give this a 2 out of 5.

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My “Jumper” Review

February 15, 2008

jumper-poster-2.jpg

2.5 out of 5

It was always a dream of mine as a kid to be able to teleport anywhere. I’m not talking about that “beam me up scotty” machine, I mean stand there and teleport anywhere. I’m sure as a ten year old kid I was hoping it would be into a girl’s locker room or something. This movie takes teleportation to whole other awesome level. If I could teleport I would want it to be exactly how they do it in this movie.

The story follows a character named David. He finds out he can teleport at a young age, and sees it as a way out of his bad home life. The story also introduces a character called Roland. We find out that he is part of a religious-like group called the Paladins who hunt the people with the ability to teleport. David eventually learns how to use his power and uses it to rob a bank, fast forward ten years and he is living in a New York City suite presumably paid for by his awesome ability.

Roland hears about the bank robberies and David is added to his hit list of people called Jumpers who all have the ability to teleport. The story mentions history of the Jumpers and Paladins and their battle that has been going on for centuries. Another character, a jumper, comes into play and he actually fights back against the Paladins, and Roland is on the top of his list.

The jumping effects in this movie are amazing. They take a simple concept of teleporting and use it in a lot of creative ways. I couldn’t have seen them portray the ability any better then they did. I also liked that the ability wasn’t as simple as think of any old place, they had to have either been there before or have to look at a picture to get there. Basically they create their own arsenal of jumping spots in their heads all over the world.

Hayden Christensen was average acting-wise. He overplayed the part a bit on some more subtle moments, but I thought he was fantastic during scenes of action. Samuel L. Jackson was by far the best character in the film. He was so intensely scary and just did everything 100%, he is one of the best actors and this part just shows how much of one he is. The other jumper that David meets was pretty solid in his part. He was probably the second best part of the movie right behind Samuel L. Jackson.

Now for the disappointments:

The opening was terrible, out of all the ways to introduce the jumpers they chose the worst one. Hayden Christensen was just narrating as they showed him jumping to different parts of the world and being overly cocky.

By far the biggest problem with this movie was the huge potential it had and how they completely missed it all. There was a small part of the movie talking about Jumpers and Paladins, and how they have been battling for centuries. There is an amazing character played by Samuel L. Jackson and the overall mythology of it all. They decided to follow one kid, who in comparison to all the mythology was insignificant, and how he went back to some girl he had a crush on as a kid.

Once you realize the whole potential of this film, it turns out to be a bit of a waste. Not only did it ignore all that potential, but it could have been longer even with the little bit of story they decided to use.

I still recommend you go see it for all the good things i mentioned. Yes, it is disappointing but there is still some things worth seeing here.

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