Mean or Funny?
I say both. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, Sarah Jessica Parker Looks Like a Horse.com
Ferris Bueller is going to be pissed.
Shrooms - DVD Movie Revew
Jen and I watched Shrooms this weekend on the DVR. It was one of those cool movie releases that HDNet does with Magnolia Pictures (I think all are owned by Mark Cuban) where they release it in the theater, for one night on HDNet and then also in the stores on DVD all on the same day.
Anyway, Shrooms wasn’t the best movie that I have ever seen from Magnolia Pictures.
Shrooms is a drug-fueled suspense movie involving a group of kids traveling to Ireland for a “trip” literally and figuratively. There are Irish country folk that would scare any hill people from West Virginia. There are many scenes running through the woods. There are many visual effects that make you feel like you are stoned in a scene of Altered States.
Anyway, there is a surprise ending. Overall the movie wasn’t particularly engaging. It was a bit creepy, but it didn’t really have those awesome jump scenes that make you jump out of your seat.
The Messengers - DVD Movie Review
I like scary movies. This movie was better than your average scary movie. It had creepy kids. It had crawling ghosts. It had Dylan McDermott. Anyway, it didn’t do anything original. It was like the Amityville Horror and Stir of Echoes combined. The plotline didn’t explain a lot of things. The characters weren’t really well developed.
Still, the movie had us jumping and creeped out a little bit. It was fun to watch even though it wasn’t that great a movie overall. Compared to some of the other stinkers in the genre, I think if you like scary movies, you will dig this flick.
The Golden Compass - DVD Movie Review
Whoever was in charge of the book, or movie script or whatever resulted in the finished movie “The Golden Compass,” really hates the church. I don’t know why, how, where, when, or whatever. In fact, I don’t really care. That isn’t my battle.
That being said, “The Golden Compass” was quite an entertaining movie. Between the little girl, the battling polar bear, the air pirates, Nicole Kidman as the Magisterium (SP?) and all the CGI action, I loved this movie. Really entertaining. I recommend it highly to anyone who likes fantasy movies and doesn’t have a hatred for kids stuff. I know a lot of people out there hate kids movies for some reason. If that is the case then you might not like this, but for everyone else, I think you will dig it.
I love the idea that everyone in the world has a weird “spirit animal” called a demon. I look forward to the follow up movies.
Cloverfield Made Me Nauseous
I really liked Cloverfield. It was really cool. The problem was the shaky cam. I don’t normally get sick aside from the way back of the station wagon facing the wrong way when I was a kid. But, I couldn’t keep my head calmed down during Cloverfield.
The movie was really very interesting and exciting and gave me the chills in a good way, but I just couldn’t look at the screen after a while. My stomach started to hurt and I honestly thought like I could have thrown up at least once.
I will write more about this one later. My stomach still hurts right now.
The Blair Witch Project - DVD Movie Review
I saw The Blair Witch Project in 1999 in a theater when it came out. It might seem trite now, but that was the only time in the history of movies live in theaters that I have carried goose bumps all the way home. At the time, I even knew that it wasn’t real, but the reality of the filming and of the reactions of the actors and the raw-ness of the video let me escape into it. And I let myself fall into the movie and it freaked me out pretty crazily.
Today, I watched it with Jen, because it was in her queue on Netflix and I really wanted to see if I could get any of the same feelings again. And I did. When they were walking through the woods and came across the rocks, and the effigies hanging in the trees, I got the goose bumps running all the way down my spine. Then when they found three piles of rocks outside their tent, I had it again. When they feverishly ran through the woods I had goose bumps. Finally, as Heather Donahue runs into the basement to see Mike standing in the corner just staring, I felt it one more time as the camera fell to the dirt into the oblivion.
Maybe I am a rube. I don’t know. I love this movie. I let it get me to a place every time I see it. I love that feeling. I just love it.
Once - DVD Movie Review
I have been looking forward to seeing Once for a while now. I saw a trailer for it on HDNet’s show “Just Trailers” and immediately recognized the beautiful music from the movie. In fact, Once is at its heart, something of a musical. The whole movie is based on an unnamed male singer/songwriter who performs on the street when he isn’t working in his father’s Hoover repair shop in Ireland. He meets a lovely Scandinavian girl and they start to make beautiful music together.
The movie peaks during the recording sessions from a story standpoint, but from a musical standpoint, the first time they sing together in a music shop. The couple sits together on a piano bench as the song slowly starts to come together. The harmonies start to break through and as cheesy as it could have been, it just worked.
The storyline is typical, but the real story here is obviously the music. Almost all the music in the film was performed live during filming with no overdubbed soundtracking or lip syncing. It is a far cry from the type of musical where people sing lines of dialogue. Instead of building songs into the story, they built a story around the songs. The result was really great, in my opinion.
I am guessing that this will be a movie for people who want to like the music first. It almost watches like a series of music videos. So don’t expect a conventional film, and you will be fine.
The Bridge - DVD Movie Review
I need to be more careful when I decide to screen certain types of movies. Jen was freaked out for hours after we watched The Bridge the other night and it almost ruined the rest of the night.
The bridge is a great documentary about all the people who kill themselves by jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The crew set up cameras for about a year and caught a whole host of footage of people jumping, people being held down so they couldn’t jump, people debating their jump, etc.
It was really interesting because how often do you get to see video of people where you KNOW without a DOUBT that it is the worst moment of their life that you are seeing? Or in some cases, it appeared to be the BEST moment of a couple of people’s lives.
Sure, the flick was a bit slow at points, but overall a fascinating documentary.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse - DVD Movie Review
If you aren’t gay and you like zombie movies, then the Resident Evil series of movies is for you. Hell, even if you are gay, there is a distinct possibility that you might find Milla Jovovich sexy. She has some kind of ridiculous super-human sex-appeal as she jumps her way through this movie, exploding the undead masses.
This isn’t really one of the finer moments in cinema, but you don’t go into a movie like this looking for great acting performances and believability. You look for crazy action, beautiful people, scary creatures, and lots of violence.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse delivers all those things and it was pretty cool. I am looking forward to Resident Evil: Extinction which comes out on January 1, 2008.
The Reaping - DVD Movie Review
Rotten Tomatoes is my favorite movie review site because it compiles the reviews from all over the country to come up with a percentage. Usually it is somewhat in line with my thoughts on a flick. In the case of the reaping, I am not sure if I could have been any further off from the critics.
They HATE The Reaping. All told, on Rotten Tomatoes, The Reaping gets 7% which is REALLY low. But just for reference, the craptacular Dark Water starring Jennifer Connelly got 45%. I would watch The Reaping ten more times before I would watch that hunk of garbage again.
All I can guess is that all the wrong reviewers were reviewing this movie thinking it was going to be something other than a suspenseful horror movie. Maybe they saw Hillary Swank’s name and thought that they better take this movie seriously.
I liked it though. As far as suspenseful horrors go, it was entertaining. It was a little slow and probably needed some additional editing in spots, but the little girl was creepy. The town was creepy. The effects looked good. Hillary Swank looked good and acted well. It was better than your average horror movie.
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