Wednesday, 1-16-8
I have had this movie in my files since I got back from Puerto Rico and I have meant to watch it but I was so caught up in the TV shows and other "interesting" things in my queue that I figured I'd get around to watching it soon. Well I finally got to it and I am sorry I didn't watch it earlier. It is by far the best "horror" movie I've seen in years. Oh it has its flaws but when it comes down to the horror factor, this movie does it for me. I'll admit that even though I liked "28 Days Later" it took me a while to come around to the idea of super-fast zombies. I'm a Romero fan and I still don't like the "Resident Evil" series but for some reason the "28 Days/Weeks Later" movies rank high in my favorites.
Catching up from "28 Days", the UK has been infected with the "Rage" virus. In seconds of infection it turns people into crazed undead and almost all of the island was lost. As survivors were located and evacuated or were found and killed by the zombie hoard, food (human flesh) became scarce and the infected starved to death (or undeath).
This movie picks up at the end of the 28 Day timeline and shows a couple living in a house with a group of survivors. They are in love and they are worried about their kids who were away on a school trip when the virus hit. A young boy comes along and begs to be let in, the wife opens the door and the infected attack the house. In the fight the husband is the only one to get away. He runs to a boat and escapes to safety. 28 weeks after infection, the island is deemed safe and the military begins to repatriate people onto the island. The two kids are reunited with their dad and they talk about how they miss their mom. The kids cross the order out of the safety zone and try to find their old house. When they do they find their mother who is skittish and insane? The military takes her into custody and finds out that the mother is infected but not showing symptoms, she is a carrier. While the medical and military brass discuss the danger/importance of finding a carrier, the dad sneaks into the room and kisses his wife. He becomes infected and tears up the medical facility. The military initiates a code red which is isolation, containment and if containment fails, extermination of the entire island.
The medical officer (Some of you will get a kick out of this, the character's name was Scarlett Ross) finds the two children hoping they share the same blood as their mother and that a cure or vaccination can be found. The containment fails and the orders are given to firebomb and chemically sterilize the entire UK. The kids and the medical officer are assisted by a conscientious sniper who shows them the way to safety. He has a buddy in a helicopter (The wheelchair dude from "OZ") who will take them all to safety. They are attacked and the boy is even bitten but because he doesn't turn into a zombie they figure they're safe and just got lucky. After various attacks and deaths, only the two kids make it to the helicopter. The pilot realizes the importance of the children's blood and takes them over the English Channel. The final scene is a full-on zombie attack chase through a building as they emerge into the daylight the background is the Eiffel Tower. The boy was a carrier just like his mother and the infection has spread to mainland Europe.
The
movie had its share of "BOO!" moments and they were good. During some of the
chase/frenzy scenes I realized the only thing I could hear were the screams of
terror. The gore was pretty graphic so I don't recommend this to anyone who has
a weak stomach. It wasn't the worst I've ever seen but then I've seen some
pretty sick shit so that isn't saying much. I had a few problems with the
plot... A full blown military quarantine with 24 hour watch snipers and standby
helicopters, armed guards freaking everywhere but somehow the dad (a janitor)
gets in to see the mother (a suspected zombie or at least someone with the blood
to save us all), gets in to see her alone? Really?
And then after he becomes a zombie, he shows up everywhere. Even after the
sniper takes them through the streets of London and they travel some distances
by car, zombie-dad shows up to mess with the kids? Nah...
And
there were a few aesthetic scenes that were noticeable. The rats would have
eaten the pizza left lying in the street and after six months of complete
neglect the trampoline should have been covered in leaves/debris and the lawns
would have been overgrown rather than looking like they were just trimmed.
Little things like that.
The only
major flaw I can think of is the mother. It is commonly established that the
infected don't attack the other infected. So if the mother was a carrier I
guess she could be safe from attack enough to get from the initial hideout to
their old house but then why does the dad attack her when he becomes infected?
Just a possible continuity error.
I really liked the ending, it sets the stage for "28 Months Later". I liked this a lot better than most of the horror out there today that just doesn't scare me. Pure gore doesn't make a horror film and neither does 90 minutes of screams. This movie balanced them out fairly well and even though the ending was predictable it was still a good flick.
8 of 11 Skulls
Tuesday, 1-1-8
I watched this one purely out of obligation to my love of horror movies and shitty 70's movies. I've heard about how gory it is and how sleazy the sex scenes are and I've heard so much about how different countries have banned it. I've seen it in rental facilities and the budget bin at BestBuy for years and I finally broke down and got it through NetFlix. It was difficult to watch. For every reason. It was camp 70's film and the writing was... well, there wasn't any writing. It was as if someone said, "I have an idea and a video camera. Let's make a movie." And thought no more of it than that.
Three friends hang out with a fourth guy who is a little mental. Not in a 'psycho/killer' way, in the 'wears a helmet/rides the short bus' way. A pretty woman comes in to town and rents a secluded cabin in the woods where she can be isolated and alone for the summer. For some reason she tells these guys all of this. She befriends the mental guy and he becomes infatuated with her. The other guys decide they will get Corky laid this summer. They harass the lady at her cabin and she is not impressed. One day she's out in her canoe sunbathing and they tow her boat far away to the other side of the lake. She's raped by one guy and let go. Just as she thinks she's escaped, the second guy rapes her and she's set free again. After another false sense of escape the third guy tries the same. She is finally let go and she makes it back to the cabin where they are waiting for her. She is raped by the leader again and the mental guy is goaded into raping her. They leave her for dead (they beat the living crap out of her) and as they leave the leader tells the mental guy to go back and stab her. Corky wipes blood on his knife and says he killed her.
The woman survived and cleans up. She starts plotting her revenge. Weeks go by and there is no report of the body. The guys start to get nervous. She tracks them all down and kills them one by one. Corky gets hung, another is chopped up with an outboard motor, one gets an axe and the leader is lured into a bathtub and castrated. The end.
It wasn't that gory, it wasn't that scary. Of course the worst part of the movie is the 45 minute rape sequence. It was graphic but it wasn't that horrifying. It was just wrong. Anyone that can watch a woman scream during a rape and not flinch is more than a little fucked up. That said, I never felt uncomfortable during this movie and I normally can't handle watching rape scenes in any movie. This one just took its course of what was inevitable according to the plans laid out by what passes for a plot. I wish I would have had my normal response and at least felt squeamish but no... I just felt nothing. The revenge scenes were only slightly better in the emotional response but they were worse in the sense of being good film. I wanted her to get her revenge, not because of the horror she endured but because I knew it had to occur before the credits would roll. Each of the revenge scenes are short and anticlimactic. The castration is almost comical and when the credits finally roll I immediately wanted to forget this movie. The hype is certainly the only thing this movie has going for it. If not for the attempts to get it banned I probably never would have seen it and I would have been happier. I have seen crappy, over the top horror films and I even like a lot of them. "Dr. Butcher MD", "The Gates Of Hell", "To The Devil A Daughter", "Alucarda" These are some of the worst movies ever made and I like them. "I Spit On Your Grave" isn't even worthy of being lumped in with them.
1 of 11 Skulls
Sunday, 12-30-7
This was another recommendation from Jose. He told me to check it out. This is the second Korean cinema piece he's told me abut and both of them were pretty good. "Old Boy" was the other one and I really liked that. This one I liked as well but for different reasons. I don't think it's a very good movie but I can't help liking it. It felt like a giant political statement but yet, it was fun.
A doctor is blatantly polluting the Han River and because of the chemicals a giant mutant is born. It comes up onto land and attacks the people. An old street vendor is there with his dim-wit son and brilliant grand-daughter. The monster grabs the grand-daughter and goes back into the river. The vendor's other two children arrive (a banker and an Olympic archer) and the family thinks the little girl is dead until they get a call from her cell phone telling them she is alive. By then the government is involved and has created the cover story of a "virus" that is in the area and locks everyone up. The family escapes and goes underground to find the girl and fight the monster. The government is trying to hold their false virus story together so they make the public aware that the family members are dangerous and contagious. With no help from outsiders the family finds the little girl and they die off one by one trying to save her. The dim-wit son finally saves her but he is too late as the government has just unleashed a massive chemical agent that kills everyone and everything. In the end the monster dies but so does every one in the family.
I really don't want to think too much about what the movie was meant to mean. With the Korean government and the American military and the secret virus and the death of every major character... It's too obvious and you can draw your own conclusions. I liked the movie based on the mutant monster. It was a fish that could walk/run on land and had a very limber tail. The early scenes with the monster dropping from the bridge into the water were really cool as well as the initial rampage where he grabs the girl. The only other scene that really stood out was when the monster emptied his stomach of all the items he ate but couldn't digest. Very gross, very cool.
It wasn't the greatest thing ever but if you ever saw a "Godzilla" movie you liked, it was definitely worth seeing.
5 of 11 Skulls
Wednesday, 12-19-7
Another gear-head movie with another "bad" ending. It started out with a 66 Impala and I was not impressed with the action. A driver and his mechanic rob a grocery store and along the way pick up the extra baggage of the driver's part-time girlfriend. All three of the passengers hate each other from time to time and it is a weird relationship they have. Just about the time I'm starting to wonder why this is touted as a great chase movie, they swap cars to a 69 Charger.
The chase sequences pick up from here. The police are chasing him in beefed up Interceptors and helicopters. The non-conventional cop that is chasing him in the helicopter is battling the driver as well as the police chief that is more concerned about politics and budgets than about catching the bad guy. He puts his career on the line to catch them as the bad guys are putting their lives on the line to get away. The driver is battling the wit of his girlfriend and the conscious of his mechanic. The chase comes to an end as the Charger loses the cops and the helicopter runs out of gas. The helicopter lands and continues to order phantom cars around to box in the Charger trying to get Fonda to outdrive himself and make a mistake. When the mechanic realizes what is going on, they celebrate and realize they are going to make a clean getaway. Just as they begin to slow down and coast out to freedom, a truck pulls out in front of them and they die in a fiery crash. The end.
Yeah, I love the ending again. Fast, crash, die, end. The funniest part was the redneck cop driving the Interceptor. He just kept talking line after line in such dripping southern drawl that I couldn't help but laugh. It was a great car chase movie and I liked it but here again it is so dated. The seventies style filming and music made the movie so campy by today's standards. But, overall, it was a lot of fun.
6 of 11 Skulls
Friday, 11-20-7
Another car film where the car is the star and the guy driving it is secondary to the gears. Kowalski is a car transporter and insists on a quick turnaround when he hits his latest stop in Denver. As he stops off for a few drugs to keep him awake he bets his dealer that he'll make it to the drop in California in fifteen hours. That's the entire plot and he's off to the races.
He evades some motorcycle cops (stopping to make sure they are alright after they crash) and finally captures the attention of the cops at the dispatch center. He drives the white 1970 Challenger top speed and outsmarts the police at every turn. A blind local DJ picks up on the chase over the police radio and tips the driver off to police barricades and road blocks. The driver runs into various adventures with a naked motorcycle driver, a snake charmer and a few others. As the final chase takes place, Kowalski runs up onto a police barricade of bulldozers. He turns around and runs into the ops chasing him from the back. He turns around again and hits top end. He approaches the bulldozers and just about the time you wonder where he's going to go, you realize that this is his final run. He slams into the dozers in a fiery crash. The end.
I LOVE movies that don't have the standard happy ending. The radio DJ was Cleavon Little, Sherriff Bart from "Blazing Saddles". Every time he was on the screen all I could hear were his lines as Bart. It was a fun movie. Lots of fast car scenes but or all its hype, relatively few chase scenes. It was billed as one of the originals and I'm sure it inspired a lot of the later movies but it falls a little short in the action department.
5 of 11 Skulls
Saturday, 12-1-7
I went through my "Serial/Mass Murderer" phase rather young and much like Bobby Brady and his Jessie James fetish, I had to be weaned off of these psychos before I began idolizing them. Ed Gein is the original. Ed was the inspiration for many of our modern real-life and fictional killers. When I saw that Steven Railsback played him in this movie, I put it first on my Netflix queue.
It follows Ed's life from the death of his mother and shows flashbacks to his mother's domineering hellfire and brimstone influence. Ed refuses to let his mother die and digs up her corpse. After mother spoils, Ed takes to digging up fresh corpses. The movie glosses over Ed's fetishes and quirks. It all but ignores his handiwork in the art of human flesh and bone. In this movie Ed develops into the psychopath and kills his final two victims. Aside from one spatter-drenched kill and his friends inability to determine what kind of meat these steaks are, there is little here to keep the squeamish away from this movie. Unfortunately, there is also very little here to keep the aficionado watching the movie at all. They kept pretty faithful to the facts and didn't allow time and legend to create a more sensational account. There were flaws of course. Plainfield, Wisconsin doesn't have mountains. There was snow on the ground when Ed was finally arrested. But aside from these few pesky details and a few name changes, the movie was pretty good. Good but not great. I remember Railsback as Manson back in 1976. I wanted this to be so great. Railsback as Gein comes across as a slightly retarded Tommy Lee Jones. It was less than I expected but still a decent performance. I didn't really like the move but probably because I knew more than the movie showed. It might be a good introduction to the world of Serial Killers but aside from that it fell flat for me.
4 of 11 Skulls
Harry Potter and the Sorcerers' Stone/Chamber of Secrets
Saturday, 12-1-7
I'm wasn't even really sure of the names of the ones I saw but they were on back to back and Teresa wanted me to sit with her so I finally gave in and had my first Harry Potter experience. Yes, my first true Harry potter exposure. A few years ago I read a couple of chapters and I was not impressed. So I've put it away and really had nothing to say about the franchise other than, "They make plenty of money, good for her." Oh sure, I railed against them but only when I'm having a conversation with someone about the latest reading they've done and they insist that Harry Potter counts as if it were an adult book. It does not. I would never claim that you should read this or that, read what you enjoy. But do not claim children's books as an accomplishment in your reading list. I consider my wife to be an intelligent woman. She reads romance novels and erotic thrillers. I don't claim that her reading is any better or worse than mine. But she never claims that JD Robb is on literary par with Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare though she will say, correctly so, that Robb surpasses Shakespeare on her personal enjoyment scale. Harry Potter is a children's book. Thousands of people enjoy them but it doesn't elevate it beyond a children's book.
So, I watched them and tried (honestly) to enjoy them.
A kid is orphaned and raised by the all-too-normal evil step family. He gets a magical message that he is accepted to a school of witchcraft. He goes to school and the movie spends an eternity doing a bit of world-building. Harry goes to class, Harry plays air-rugby, Harry has trouble with some of his teachers, Harry is having trouble with bullies at school. Boring. Everything they did was excruciatingly simple. They did manage to fool me simply because my first impulse was correct but I changed it because I thought, "They wouldn't leave it THAT easy to guess would they?" Yes they would. No surprises at all.
So Harry is the unwitting hero and saves the day by killing the unspeakable evil bad guy. How does he destroy the bad guy? A simple touch. He's Harry Potter and his destiny took care of any pesky training or special ability to kill the bad guy...
On to the second movie...
Harry had been getting warning not to return to school. His home life sucks so bad that he never gives these warning a second thought. He returns and is starting to hear voices. Bad things are happening and the voices are drawing Harry (and his friends) to the crime scenes and now Harry is a suspect. He is still having troubles with rivals and bullies. He overcomes them enough to solve the schools latest problems and break the curse. He kills the bad guy again who turns out to be another incarnation of the bad guy from the first movie. The end.
Here again as in the first one, all of the "tricks" and "surprises" were so blatant and ordinary I felt sorry for the poor fool that fell for them. Much like the "Divinci Code", the gimmicks were simple enough that the general public could solve them and feel smart. No suspense at all.
The acting was the only thing worse than the script. These kids couldn't act if their lives depended on it. The girl sounds (and looks) like she's reading off of queue cards. The fat kid is actually better in the first one. He's almost bearable in the first one. Here in the second one I wanted bad things to happen to him.
Harry? Well Harry is special isn't he? I kept waiting for the little prick to slap both hands to his cheeks and scream like the "Home Alone" kid. I'd like to hang that kid by his Tom Baker scarf to the flag pole at Hogwarts.
I never really like child actors as any lead role. I really don't like British people in general and I really don't like the "Potter" phenomenon. So these three elements converge and I have nothing good to say about movies that millions of people love. Surprised? If so then you really don't know me at all do you? At least I'm admitting my bias. At least I deleted the line about Kings Cross and 50 Quid. (Ask Teresa if you really want to know what THAT was all about) I knew flat out from the beginning that I wouldn't like these movies but I do have a couple of honest things I didn't like.
First; The acting was truly bad. Bad I tell you, BAD!
Second; The Quiddich match was the same as the podrace in Episode one. Painful and slow. It could have been wrapped up in less than two minutes and accomplished all it needed to accomplish.
Third; The scripts were boring. It may have been taken word for word from the book and you all may love the book. As someone who has never read the books, the screenplay was S...L...O...W... The action and effects were peppered in to show us a school of magic and very little plot advancement. We understood it was a school of magic when it said, "Hogwarts school of Wizardry/Witchcraft!"
If I had to close with something positive, I have to close with this, Thank god I'll never see the remaining films. Fuck Harry Potter and fuck this franchise.
5 of 11 Skulls
Thursday, 11-29-7
On of the podcasts I like mentioned this movie again so I decided I would watch it again because I don't remember much about it other than being at my Nana and Pop-Pop's house when it aired...
The movie opens on a Wookie house. We meet Chewbacca's family. His wife Mala, his son Lumpy and his father Itchy. I guess they guy who thought up really cool names was off that day. Itchy and Lumpy. Ok... So the family is eagerly awaiting Chewbacca's return and apparently he is late. I say apparently because you have to infer everything from the movements. The first ten minutes take place entirely in the house with no spoken words other than the Wookie growl and no subtitles. TEN MINUTES!!! It was like really painful Wookie mime. We see a few cool things like flat panel TVs and well, ok, maybe not a few cool things but hell, they showed us flat panels in the 70's, why didn't we get them until recently? So we see Mala in an apron taking out the trash because all she does is stereotypical women's work. Cook, clean, take out the trash and worry about her man.
We are treated to a live human being and our first spoken English by the local trader played by Art Carney. Yeah, that's what I said, Art freaking Carney. He shows up with "Life Day" presents for the family and tells them not to worry because he knows that Chewbacca will be home soon. Art gives grandpa Itchy a virtual reality machine. Oh man I wish he hadn't done that. Now we get to see the VR presentation which involves some chick dressed up as a bird undulating and singing as Grandpa Itchy becomes very, VERY aroused. Art Carney as a Wookie porn dealer... Probably the most disturbing scene I've seen in a long time.
Harvey Korman shows up in three roles throughout the movie. All of them make me wonder what blackmail material they had on him to make him do this movie. He's an android Julia Child who melts down half way through the recipe. He's a horny bar patron who drinks through a hole in the top of his head. And he's an android instructor who melts down half way through the how-to manual. Each of the performances more forgettable than the last. And folks, forgettable in this movie means a good thing. If you had to remember any of this you'd be in therapy.
Mala makes a couple of video conference phone calls looking for news on Chewbacca. Princess Leia tells her that she hasn't seen him and dismissed Mala because she is busy. Bitch. Luke Skywalker is busy working on his X-Wing when he gets the call. He is much nicer about it but cuts the phone call short when his engine starts venting more gas and he has to work on it. Mark Hamill had just been in his big car wreck and there was so much face makeup on him that I really thought they had brought in another actor to play him. He looked like a twelve year old girl.
The Imperial soldiers are combing the planet looking for any rebel materials. They act like dicks and look a lot less impressive than they do in the movie. They raid Lumpy's bedroom and tear it apart. While this is going on, Lumpy (and us) watches a cartoon about the rebel forces. Nice timing, he couldn't have waited to watch this until the Imperial troops left his freaking house? This cartoon was horrible but it was by far the best thing in the movie.
There is no doubt as to C-P30's homosexuality, R2-D2 is made of rubber and flexes when he moves. Han Solo is actually an alien with a misshapen head and Boba-Fett (his first appearance in the Star Wars universe) shows up and helps the gang until he turns them over to Darth Vader for bounty money. Lumpy is excited as he watches and draws the suspicion of the Imperial troops. They decide they are going to stick around.
Lumpy's Life Day present from Art Carney was a holographic music box. He watches a horrible pre-Circe de Soleil tumbling/circus act that made no sense. One of the Imperials ask what it is and Art shows him a holographic music video of Jefferson Starship. STAR SHIP, get it? A whole damn song full of glowing florescent pink and green. Oh god it's unbearable.
At some point the Imperials are watching a propaganda channel that show how horrible life is on Tatooine. To show this, we visit the cantina bar. The cantina band is there and they are still playing the same damn song. Behind the bar, ladies and gentlemen, Beatrice Arthur! Oh yeah, when I think futuristic space opera, I think Bea Arthur. She's hit on by a creepy Harvey Korman and she keeps turning him down. Just when it can't get any worse, the Imperials impose a curfew and how do you close down a bar? With Bea Arthur singing a song. She sings some inane lyrics to the same cantina band melody. I wanted to open a vein.
So now we have Chewbacca and Han Solo showing up at the house. They have to kill a Stormtrooper to get there and Han has to go back to the ship because he was double parked, but Chewbacca got home in time for Life Day. They all head over to the ceremony and SURPRISE, Luke, Leia, Han and the droids are there and waiting for them. (Do they do this EVERY year at Life Day?)
The Life Day ceremony begins and we get a lot of wookies wearing red robes bowing silently around a table for five minutes. Just about the time you can't take the silence, Princess Leia breaks out into song and you come to appreciate the previous silence. She's so stoned she can barely stand up. Years later Carrie Fisher will admit that she doesn't even remember filming this movie.
Finally, it ends. Mercifully, it ends. With the horrible appearances of the 70's actors and the lame musical numbers I couldn't take much more. It was obvious that they were trying to drag out the two hours. "Alright kid, we've got twenty minutes of script written, let's look at life in a Wookie house for ten or fifteen minutes..."
The cheesy video games and early computers were alright. It was the late seventies, Coleco Head to Head baseball was still futuristic. I don't care what George Luca$ says about the development of the Ewoks, Lumpy is an Ewok. Either Mala got some interspecies wookie or the Ewoks were originally envisioned as part of Chewbacca's world. They also kept saying "May the Force be with you". But in all the Jedi killed in Episodes 1, 2 and 3, did you ever see ONE wookie wielding a lightsaber? Did Chewbacca ever pick up a light saber in "Empire" or "Jedi"? Wookies don't believe in the Force. It's got to be something like continually telling your Jewish friends "Merry Christmas".
Luca$ has gone on record as saying if he had time and a hammer he'd hunt down every bootleg copy and smash it. Yet, years later he produced; Jar Jar Binks. If anything in the Star Wars universe deserves to be smashed with a hammer...
It was a cheesy marketing ploy designed to cash in on the merchandising and to keep people interested until they could crank out "Empire". 70's TV special considered, it was still horrible. Just to cleanse the palette, I put on "Full Metal Jacket" but without the big speakers and surround sound, it just couldn't wash the poison from my mind... Fun to watch once, torture to put your friends through later.
3 of 11 Skulls
Sunday, 11-18-7
Tarantino's half of the "Grindhouse" flick. I liked the concept. The idea of releasing a 70's style double feature right along with the crackle in the soundtrack and the flicker in the screen... I thought it would be cool. Unfortunately he either went too far with it or he didn't go far enough. The movie took place in modern day America. Cell phones and all that. But the movie dragged out like a slow 70's drama. If he had replicated the 70's movie I would have endured it but it just went on too long. Mindless exposition that never has any payoff. I wanted to go to sleep. But, there were a couple of good scenes and I suffered through it to the end.
Four girls drive through the city. They chatter on and on about mindless things. It is obvious that Tarantino is trying to replicate the success of "Pulp Fiction's" mindless dialog but here he fails miserably. It is warmed over prattle that I had absolutely zero interest in. The girls arrive at a bar for a night of partying before a girls-only weekend at the lake house. In the course of the night we meet another bar patron who is on bad terms with our gaggle of giggling tits and script fodder. They all meet up with Stuntman Mike (played by Kurt Russell) who is just passing through. We see that Stuntman Mike is an amicable cowboy type who is a really nice guy. He offers to give the outsider girl a ride home. As she gets into his souped up Chevy Nova she is surprised to see that the passenger seat is missing and encased in Plexiglas. Stuntman mike educates her on what the stuntman industry calls a "death proof car". He can crash into anything in this baby and live. She is relieved until she also notices that there is no way to open the door and she is locked in. Stuntman Mike then tells her that she is in the wrong seat for the car to be death proof. He goes on a maniacal ride smashing her from side to side and back to front. She appears to be close to death and Stuntman Mike drives head on into the oncoming carload of the other girls. Everyone dies, excluding Stuntman Mike who was, in the death proof seat.
A year goes by and in another town Stuntman Mike surfaces again in his new death proof car. Four more girls are sitting around talking again. It didn't work earlier and it doesn't work this time either. So they go out into the country to test drive a classic car. They leave the baby of the group behind and go for a joy ride. The daring one gets out onto the hood and holds in place by two belts tied through the open windows of the doors. They are having fun until Stuntman Mike shows up and tries to run them off the road. There is a nice fifteen minute chase sequence where they are running from and then chasing Stuntman Mike. Most of it with the girl still on the hood. There were THOUSANDS of moments where they could have hit the brakes and stopped long enough to get the third girl into the car. But I guess it wouldn't have given us anything to watch. Eventually they turn the tables on Stuntman Mike and beat the crap out of him. The end.
This was a waste of film. It was a self-indulgent wet dream and served no purpose other than to showcase Tarantino's love of classic cars, 70's films and off-topic conversations. I watched this with Freddy and I promised him I wouldn't tear it apart until I saw the whole thing. No repeat of "The Crow". Well, in my honest opinion, I see no reason for this movie to exist and if I never see it again I'll only be too happy. The only good thing I have to say about it is that it did make reference to several old "gear head" movies and I just added them to my Netflix queue. I'm hoping they don't bear any resemblance to this piece of shit they inspired.
2 of 11 Skulls
Friday, 11-16-7
Before we get started, just a friendly word of advice... You know that I like to put up pictures with the movie reviews; do not Google, "Knocked Up". You can't even Google, "Knocked Up Movie". Trust me, just don't.
Here is a movie that has been told a hundred times before and I wasn't expecting to like it. I saw the trailers and could have written every line in the film. I wasn't wrong. There is nothing in the movie that will surprise you. It is thoroughly Franken-scripted from the ten or twelve movies just like it. All that aside, I liked it. Weird huh? I liked the movie and I thought it was cute. Not great, not anything I'd ever buy, but cute.
Guy is having a fun bachelor life with his stoner buddies, he goes out to the club. Girl is upwardly mobile and successful and goes out to the club. The two meet up and have a one-nighter. She discovers she is pregnant and they decide to try to get to know each other. They come from different worlds and idea of the movie rests upon the culture clash between the two. They get along great and their friends can't understand why. As the big day approaches she melts down and kicks the guy out of her life. He leaves but discovers that he loves her and returns in time to make things right. The baby is born and they live happily ever after.
As a movie it was alright. A little stupid at times and you'd have to be a complete moron to not know what is coming next. If they had thrown a twist in there I would have been surprised but I don't know how they would have done it. Make the guy leave and never come back? Coming soon to theatres near you; "Knocked Up part 2: Child Support"? Nah, let them have their happy ending and their silly movies. Not every movie needs to be deep. I can't believe I just wrote that but really, it was a cute movie and I am starting to really like Seth Rogen. I'm looking forward to "Zack and Miri", I think this guy can be a pretty good actor if someone gives him a decent lead part. I guess he had that opportunity here in this one but I don't know if the movie wasn't great because of him or if because the movie was played out before it got started.
5 of 11 Skulls
Last Updated: 01/18/08 04:36 a