The Room (2003)

(This is going be a long rant so unless you don’t have time, just read the last paragraph and I’m gonna go full spoilers so if you really care, then don’t read this) You’re tearing me apart “The Room!!” Now…..I can’t tell you how much this movie is bad. I mean MY GOD! This is the worst of the worst. The steepest pit. GAAAHHHH! I DON’T WANT TO WRITE ABOUT IT!! Every line misses its mark. Every character is unlikable. Even the supposedly caring mother is a terrible person. Even with the main character, Jonny, the person we are supposed to identify with, has absolutely nothing remotely good! I LAUGHED at the loop-holes, dialogue, conflict, wall-to-wall gratuitous sex scenes, characters, and EVERYTHING in between. You might say, “Dude, you just gotta let go and just laugh at the whole movie,” NO! You don’t know what you are asking for! And sadly I am supposed to dissect this whole thing which will probably give me cancer thinking about it again.

                It stars Tommy Wiseau. You probably never ever heard of that name and never knew it existed until you either watched this movie or watched a review of it. He also wrote, produced, and directed this atrocity. He has some job that is never told but apparently it gives him lots of Benjamins. He is in love with Lisa played by Juliette Danielle. She is the type of character that you wouldn’t care if she would go to rot in the deep depths of hell, but I’ll get into that later. Jonny loves Lisa. Jonny adopted Denny who is the most pointless and weird character ever put in film. In one scene, Jonny and Lisa are going to “take a nap” and then Denny asks if he can go up too….I mean wow…..Anyways, Jonny and Lisa love each other right? Wrong. Lisa tells her mother that she doesn’t love him anymore and then after she leaves; Lisa calls Jonny’s best friend Mark to “talk.” Then guess what happens! Well I’ll leave that up to you. You can probably guess it goes from there. Jonny has a relationship with Lisa and Mark but Jonny doesn’t know about it.

                The writing is the worst, most disturbing, laughable, worst acted, most stupid, and just plain bad things that gush out of the film. Let me give you an example: Johnny: [walks into flower shop] Hi. Flower Shop Clerk: Can I help you? Johnny: Yeah, can I have a dozen red roses, please? Flower Shop Clerk: Oh, hi, Johnny. I didn't know it was you. [grabs bouquet of roses] Flower Shop Clerk: Here you go. Johnny: That's me. How much is it? Flower Shop Clerk: It'll be eighteen dollars. Johnny: [hands over cash] Here you go. Keep the change. [grabs flowers and pats dog on the counter] Johnny: Hi, doggy. Flower Shop Clerk: You're my favorite customer. Johnny: Thanks a lot. Bye! Flower Shop Clerk: Buh-bye! There are no words….

                Remember about what I said about Lisa being the worst person in the movie? Well let me tell you why. Not only is she cheating on her fiancé (while still being in an affair with Jonny) she does it at a party when no one is there, she calls him while Jonny is in the bathroom. I MEAN COME ON. Dump the guy instead of just…*inhale* *exhale* And at the very end Jonny kills himself cause he figured out about Lisa so he blows his brains out (I laughed when that happened. Does that make me a bad person?) Lisa and Mark go to his apartment and then she says that now they are free to be together…….GGGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!! SHE SHOULD HAVE DIED! WHY DIDN’T JONNY KILL HER!?! WHY IS SHE STILL ALIVE!!???

                MY GOD, THIS MOVIE!!!! It hits everything wrong. I barely touched the surface. I didn’t talk about the Mother, the plot-holes, the god-awful accent of Tommy Wiseau all for the sake of my, and your sanity. But you know what?! You should watch. After this whole rant, I am actually promoting this atrocity of a film. Your probably thinking to yourself, “The @#$%!?”, but there is a good (bad) reason for this. As Doug Walker/Nostalgia Critic said, ”This is a movie you have to see to believe,” and I agree with that statement. In the end, I hate this movie with a passion and I think you should watch it, to hate it too.  

1/10 as a movie
10/10 as a hilarious piece of cinematic atrocity

True Grit (2010)

The Coen Brothers have done it again. That being said, let’s start with the review.

This film is about a girl, Mattie Ross, who seeks revenge toward her father’s cold-blooded killer Tom Cheney.  She then finds Rooster Cogburn who is a one-eyed, soulless, drunkard.  LaBeouf, a by the book Texas Ranger, tags along because he is in pursuit of Cheney as well, because he killed the Texas senator. An adventure ensues as they cross miles and miles to find one man and make him pay with his blood.

This remake of the 1969 film stars Jeff Bridges as Cogburn, Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross, and Matt Damon as LeBeouf. This of course is a western and like most westerns, it takes a while to get started but once it does, it really gets started. Let me talk about the acting first. Steinfeld is fantastic as Mattie Ross. She makes her character cold and sharp. She doesn’t want anything other than her killer hanged. She does not smile, laugh, cry, or feel remorse. She just wants to kill Tom Cheney. What I love about her character is that she is so different than other leading women. That also brings me to another point: Why did the Academy make put her in the category as a “Best Supporting Actress?!?!” She was the main character and you know it!!! Oh, well.

Jeff Bridges as Cogburn is also fantastic. He is not just the good guy that likes to drink a little. It’s a little more complicated than that. If you didn’t know he was a marshal, you would probably think he is a villain. When you see him with Mattie and LaBeouf, you realize that he is an unpredictable drunk mess. You don’t know how he will respond to the sentence that you say. He might curse at you, or pop a bullet through your head. LaBeouf on the other hand is a no-nonsense, from the book type person. You can see that he wants to be taken seriously and with respect by others but they just don’t.

I really liked how they portrayed the villains too. Instead of a mastermind, Tom Cheney (played by Josh Brolin) is just a part of a posse that straggled off and killed others while he was drunk. He is not a leader. He is a pathetic part of a gang who make him carry horses, nothing more. While Ned Pepper (played by Barry Pepper) is the smart leader. I love how they make him seem like a guy from another movie, but he was just brought up by what one of his men did.

So in the end I thought this was a great movie. I love how dark and sad and different  this is to other films. This is a movie everyone should see. Not only because of the great characters, but great directing, screenplay, and great acting. The end though, left me empty and cold. After you see these characters go through hell and back, I asked myself was it worth it. And that’s the big unanswered question. Was it worth it?

9/10

Total Recall (THE REMAKE)

This is the remake of the movie with the same name. So it's safe to say if you saw the original, you will probably know everything that will happen. Now before I start this review I want to say that I did not watch the original.

Let me start of by saying that the CGI in this film is gorgeous! I swear this film looks AMAZING! I love the dis-utopian future. But I'll talk about this later. This movie stars Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, Bokeem Woodbine, Bill Nighy, and John Cho. The story is about a man named Doug Quiad who is married to Kate Beckinsale and works at a robot factory. And apparently he has a terrible life even though he is married to Kate Beckinsale. So he goes to REKALL which is supposed to change your "world." It's basically a good(or bad) dream but instead of waking up, you stay in that world. So he goes to REKALL and after that happens, his life basically goes to the deep depths of hell. That's pretty much the base. The story is pretty Inceptionish.

OKAY! Now that I finished with the plot I will gush out about how FANTASTIC the CGI is. The city is the highlight of the film. I love how they made huge cities. Since if it's the future, there is obviously going to be lots of overpopulation and so they make the city have lots of layers. The bottom being the toxic, dilapidated one, and the top being the high class skyscrapers. It looks gorgeous! The action in the film is also pretty good, but there are much more chases than there are gun fights which I quite like. You don't get nail biting scenes by a big shoot out scenes. You get nail biting scenes by the main character never being safe and always delayed by someone always chasing them. You know, in some movies the main character is being delayed. For example: The main character is planting a bomb on a fast moving truck and the driver is trying make him get off so the truck is swaying and the character drops the bomb to another part of the truck. That causes suspense. This movie had a bit of that.

Some problems are that some characters are just not shown or fleshed out as much as they should. His wife is a much, much bigger villain than what the movie says that it should. You see the "main" villain about 3(random guess) times and at the final fight. You see the wife chase him, and shoot him a LOT more. Also there are 2 characters that are pretty essential with the story and they get killed off a couple of scenes after Quaid meets him in person.

Overall this was a very fun movie. It has some obvious flaws but who cares!? I think the critics looked at this movie the wrong way. This isn't supposed to make you lose sleep over the story and it's characters, it's supposed to give you a simple storyline and give you great visuals. And at the end of the day That's what we all need.

7/10

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

This is a very famous film that nobody has heard about. This might be a pretty short review for a pretty short film. Battleship Potemkin is directed by Sergei Eisenstein and stars a helluva lot of extras. This is a propaganda film about soldiers in, well, Battleship Potemkin who don't really like how they are being fed in, well Battleship Potemkin. So they say "Why the hell are we being fed rotten meat in....well BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN!" So they say make a mini uprising because Stalin was treating them like crap. The captain decides that his crew is expandable so he chooses that his loyal comrades just waste them. But wait!!! Vakulinchuk intervenes by making the loyal troops notice who they are shooting at. The loyal troops then turn against the captains and they all throw them over board. The uprising has begun.

 

I do not think this is just a propaganda film. It is a lot more than that. It is handled so well that, well it's so much more than a propaganda film. And the reason I say that is because of the reason I think this film is so greatly remembered as one of the best. The Odessa Steps sequence. This scene is shocking, and is still shocking now.   Russians killed by Russian soldiers. Families being destroyed. Kids being shot at point blank. People pleading for mercy just to get a bullet to the face. Man killing man. It very much reminded me of Schindler's List. People dying just because. No mercy, no remorse. I cannot believe this was released in 1925. I wonder how the priest in Cinema Paradiso would have reacted to this film.

 

Now after that scene (if you can even call it that) ends the movie still goes on and you wonder: How can this film top that?! Well sadly it does not. It keeps going. So you can see this film is not perfect. No film is. Hell not even the Aviator. The flaws of this movie are that some shots are just too, too, TOO slow. Now I have seen 2001: A Space Oddysey, I was not bored in that film. I was in this one. There were just scenes where nothing was happening. Minor complaint sure but for a 70 minute movie, that was just pushing it. Still a great movie though. I highly recommend this movie. A LOT!! The parts of the Odessa Steps just make you lose all faith in humanity and many shots are, well shot with class. This is a great movie and it's....well Battleship Potemkin.

 

8.5/10

 

(P.S. What the hell did the baby in the carriage mean????)

 

(P.S.S You can watch this film for free on YouTube! Here is the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh2SuJrEjwM&feature=watch-now-button&wide=1 )

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Well....No. It's not as good as The Dark Knight. But let me tell you, it is pretty d*mn close.

This film is directed by Christopher Nolan and stars Christian Bale as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Anne Hathaway as Catwoman/Selina Kyle, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Blake the "hot-head' cop who is an orphan, Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth, Gary Oldman as James Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate, and Tom Hardy as Bane. Now let me tell you that I will try my hardest to not tell you anything crucial to the plot in this review. If you are a purist and don't want to know anything about the film, why are you here??? Go watch it, it's fantastic. Now for those of you who don't care here is the review.

The basis of the plot is that, peace has stopped in Gotham. 8 years after the ending of The Dark Knight, crime has stopped. No crime means no Batman. No Batman means no playboy Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne stays in Wayne Manor in seclusion and also uses a cane. Surely Batman has seen better days. Then out of nowhere comes chaos and anarchy. Bane is in charge of this uprising. Joker was right. These people will eat each other. Safe to say that the story is fantastic. And the script is full of jokes that will always keep the audience entertained. Something that really stood out to me was the editing. Nolan writes scenes where ten things are happening at once and you still understand what was happening. The editor (Lee Smith) must have gone to great lengths to make the movie at it's final stage as good as it could be.

The directing is great though occasionally some scenes have a main character in focus while a battle(or something) is blurred. That bothered me because I wanted to see what was happening "back there." Other than that though, Nolan's directing is pitch perfect. Now to talk about the main characters. They of course are great. No other actors could do a better job. Tom Hardy really stood out to me though. It is not the dialogue that stood out to me but his stance. The way he intimidatingly just stands with a mask on his face. He stands as if nothing will stop him. While not the Joker he is still damn good. Another thing that bothered me though is Batmans voice. While it didn't stand out to me the last films, it did in this one. But that's just me nitpicking.

I have to say that this story was a memorable one. This one always keeps you guessing. More than the last Batman films. In the last Batman films, you knew Batman would survive. His friends might have died but not Batman himself. Since this film is three hours, and since you lose track of time while you are watching it you have no clue what will happen. Will he survive? You just don't know. I applaud Christopher Nolan with this trilogy. He preformed CPR on a franchise that desperately needed one. This was a fantastic movie. The acting was great, directing was phenomenal minus a very few annoyances, the writing was sharp, and the editing was perfect. And I didn't even talk about the action scenes. I want to give this a ten but since this a review, I just can't. In my mind this is just a little but worse than The Dark Knight but still a helluva great film.

9.8/10

Brave (2012)

Brave is another film by Pixar. They usually make great films. Usually. You probably know the two films which don't live up to the Pixar name. Cars was an okay movie to say the least but was a disappointment considering the past films. Cars 2 was just bad. Disney Pixar's Brave is the CPR of the Pixar films. And it's... okay. It's just okay. No it's not Citizen Kane but it's not Plan 9 From Outer Space. It's. Just. Okay.

This film is about a girl named Merida(Kelly Macdonald), a Scottish girl who is the daughter of a King and Queen. The Queen, Elinor (Emma Thompson), is a strict mother who is kind of portrayed as a "bad guy." She doesn't let Merida be who she wants to be. The king, Fergus(Billy Connolly), who a goofy dad and is pretty much the opposite of Elinor. The plot is Merida wanting to change her fate because she does not want to be the princess of her kingdom. All of the sudden her family gets a letter saying that 3 first born sons of 3 clans of 3 clan leaders will come so then Merida will can choose who she will marry. As you can imagine, Merida is not very "thrilled" to be married. The fantasy adventure ensues.

Let me start off by saying the animation is amazing. I didn't get the chance to see this in 3-D but hot damn did this film look good. Merida is a character that stood out for me. She seemed very adventurous and daring. I'm not sure why but I am always find that type of character. I also liked the king because he was very cartooney. He has a huge body but small legs. He was also, like I said, goofy and clumsy. This film really surprised me on the plot. It went in a completely different direction then what I was expecting. Instead of a grand epic adventure you get a movie where the main locations are a forest and a castle. It also adds a mythological sub-plot when it really didn't need to. This wouldn't be so bad but they drop half way the movie and bring it back towards the very end. It might sound that I am bashing this movie but I'll put the good stuff next. There was comedy in this film. Quite a lot actually. Kids will laugh out loud at this movie. And uhhhh.....well.....that's it.

Bottom line is that this is a kids film. Kids will love this film. I want to like this film more but oh well. You won't hate it but you won't love it. That's about it, I mean there is not much else to say. This is an okay film but you will forget about it in 1 day. Come on Pixar! Next film bring your A-Game!!!

6.5/10

Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying andLove The Bomb (1964)

Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb, is a Cold –War satire directed and written by Stanley Kubrick starring George C. Scott and Peter Sellers and  it was released in 1964. When this movie was released, many people were surprised on its subject matter. A satire of a conflict that could destroy humanity. Kubrick made it anyway. The story is about General Jack D. Ripper, (clever Kubrick), played by Sterling Hayden, who orders B-52 bombers to bomb Russia. This surprises Washington because they did not order this attack. Ripper took off all communications from his air force base so nobody could interfere with his attack. The only way to stop the bombers is to give a three letter code that only Ripper knows. Ripper also told his soldiers to shoot anybody in a 200 yard perimeter around the base. He does this because he thinks that the Russians are destroying the purity of our bodily fluids. The comedy just writes itself.

                The films comedy is phenomenal.  Every line, every facial expression, is done to add comedic hilarity. Stanley Kubrick told George C. Scott to over act for practicing the actual scene. Scott didn’t want to use the practice scenes but Kubrick used them anyway. This enraged Scott but if it wasn’t for Kubrick’s smart move, the film wouldn’t be as funny as it is. Peter Seller played three rolls in the film. Dr. Strangelove who is a former Nazi nuclear expert now working for the U.S., Lionel Mandrake; a British officer, and lastly the president of the United States. He plays all of these roles expertly and Dr. Strangelove is probably one of the best quotable characters.

                The movie takes place in basically just three locations. The iconic War Room, the inside of a B-52 bomber, and the inside and outside of an air force base. The film can be suspenseful in fairly comedic ways.  For example, in one scene the whole world depends on a Coca-Cola machine. It is these parts that make this film so enjoyable. And here is the kinda scary part: This all could have happened. Sure it maybe a little of a stretch but the basic idea of a corrupt general that exceeded his authority and send bombers to wipe out all of Russia could have happened.

                Dr. Strangelove is a great film and surprisingly a lot of fun. Who knew a black comedy about the cold war could have been this good. Though the ending did leave me feeling a wanting more. I guess I haven’t learned to stop worrying and love the bomb yet.