DRIVE ANGRY 3D.

I actually didn't know much going into this movie. I'd hardly even seen the trailer (and didn't remember much of what I'd seen). All I knew was that there was action, it had Nic Cage, and apparently something about escaping Hell. But boy, is there so much more. While I might spoil this more for y'all since it's more than I knew going in, I'm gonna go ahead and give you the plot--though not much more than what is given on imdb. The plot is about John Milton (Nicolas Cage), a man who escapes Hell to exact revenge on Jonah King (Billy Burke). Jonah is in charge of a Satanic Cult and just so happened to kill Milton's daughter and kidnap his baby granddaughter so that, by midnight on the next full moon, Jonah can sacrifice the baby and bring Hell on Earth. Along for the ride is Piper (Amber Heard), a waitress who Milton "befriends" and uses her car. They aren't alone, however. Chasing after Milton is a man known only as The Accountant (William Fichtner), wanting to collect him and bring him back.

This is hands down the most fun I've had at the theater so far this year. Granted, I haven't gone a ton yet this year, and they were for 2010 Oscar films. So this is technically the first 2011 film I've seen. And I sure hope the rest of the films I see this year are this fun. The movie is basically like mixing Constantine with Death Proof. It's sex, violence, absurdity, humor, and a bit of supernatural sprinkled on top.

One of the things I really enjoyed was that there's really not that scene where they sit Piper down and explain things. We're not given the boring 5-minute exposition moment. Instead, they give us the story through dialogue throughout the movie, and we piece everything together through what we're given (and we aren't given everything--just enough that matters). So those who wrote the script did a nice job with that. And speaking of, the dialogue had a lot of fun moments, too. But the dialogue was made even better by the actors.

Nic Cage doesn't go batty in the movie. He keeps it calm and collected, but it turns him into quite the badass in the process. Though, strangely, a lot of his comedy comes from the fact that he's not hamming it up. For instance, I think a certain scene in a motel room near the end of the first act would have lost something had he gone crazy with it. Then we have Amber Heard, who is awesome. She's no damsel in distress. She's there to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and she's all out of bubble gum. Not to mention she's damn sexy. Billy Burke is fun as Jonah, and he takes the role of ham in the movie. He doesn't go to Cage levels, but he definitely has his moments. But there are two people who steal the show. The first I want to mention is Tom Atkins as the police captain, and he does take it to some Cage levels at times. He's crazy and over-the-top, and he has a handful of fun lines. But the best of the film, hands down, is William Fichtner as The Accountant. He's funny, smooth, and completely enthralling. I want to know more about his character. There's a chunk of the movie where you don't see him for a while, and I really missed him. He was definitely one of my favorite parts of the film.

But then there's the action and violence, which is insane. Some of it is brutal; most of it is done with a (dark) comedic undertone, though. Cars and guns and baseball bats and garden tools and all sorts of things are used in this movie. And believe it or not, the 3D is actually very good. I'd recommend seeing it in 3D, as there are a lot of gags that were made for it.

Leave the kids at home, though. This is a pretty strong R. There's sex, (full frontal) nudity, language, extreme violence... basically everything you'd expect in an exploitation/grindhouse movie, which this basically is (and so much better than Machete and Death Proof). I'm just gonna stop rambling about it. It's a highly entertaining flick that, if you're a fan of this type of movie, I'd definitely recommend checking out. And to end with some cheese: It was one Hell of a ride that definitely left me happy (yeah... THREE puns).


Royale With Cheese

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON.

I'm gonna do this review a bit differently than usual (don't worry, you're not missing anything by me skipping the usual plot blurb at the beginning. There isn't much of one to begin with. Anywho...). It's no secret that I have a large disliking of the Twilight books. Yes, I've read them all. No, it's not because I'm a lit snob (I'm really not). If you want a full list of reasons why I don't care for them, you can check here. Otherwise, I'll keep it to New Moon in this post. And on top of not liking the books, I hated New Moon the most of them all. But ever since I saw the first film and discovered, much to my surprise, that the film was actually better than the book (not hard to do when all you can do is make improvements... the books are, for the most part, unfilmable to any common viewer, so they have to add into the films everything the book was lacking to make them work), I actually started to anticipate New Moon. I wondered if it would take out everything that made me hate New Moon: The Book and make New Moon: The Movie actually enjoyable.

So let's go through a list of why I hated New Moon: The Book so much:

1) Bella is an insufferable, unlikable, selfish character who just uses and abuses those around her to satisfy her own needs.

2) Jacob goes from great character and much more suitable love interest to unlikable jerk about halfway in.

3) All depression, not much humor. And without much plot to keep you going, that's not that great.

4) Long, drawn out scenes of Bella being a moaning zombie... and not that kind that eats human flesh.

5) Absolutely zero action (as is the case with basically the whole series, really).

So how does New Moon: The Movie fare with these five aspects? Let's see:

1) Bella, unfortunately, is still an insufferable, unlikable, selfish character who just uses and abuses those around her to satisfy her own needs. But hey, at least she admits it once or twice in the movie (not in those harsh of words, but whatever). Oh, quick note while we're on the subject of admitting things. I love an admission she makes at the beginning of the movie that I don't believe she makes in the book. Bella and Edward are fighting over age, and Bella says something along the lines of "Isn't this kinda gross? I should be disgusted" based on their age difference. That made me smile.

2) Jacob... oh, Jacob. I loved Jacob in the first half of the book and came to hate him in the second half. In fact, Jacob didn't start to turn back around to likable again until about the mid-point of the last book. So I am delighted to announce that not only does Jacob stay likable in the movie, but his bursts of anger feel more rationalized in the movie than in the book. However, because of this, I feel movie goers are going to have an even harder time accepting that Bella would rather choose Edward over him. I think the only thing that helped me rationalize her choice in the book was the fact that Jacob became kind of a douche at times. And while he has some moments in the movie, they actually make some kind of sense, unlike the book. But the actor did a really good job with the character. He was very fitting (and funny).

3) Which brings us to our next point. The book was pretty dark, dull, and depressing. Like the book, the movie still has not much of a plot, and just kinda bounces from scene to scene. But the movie inserted some much needed comedy, particularly with Jacob and his La Push friends (though I'm actually kinda upset that they basically all but removed Quil and Embry, giving them only a couple lines each). And surprisingly, a lot of the humor was purposeful. Though there was quite a bit that wasn't, as well. For instance, there's a scene with Edward walking in slow motion as the wind blows his shirt back, as if he's some TV model (who eventually starts to sparkle). I'm sorry, but that's just so terrible it's funny. That's really the only thing that helped me get over the ridiculous melodrama of the whole thing--it takes itself so freakin' seriously that it almost makes a mockery of itself. In fact, I'm wondering if the director purposefully gave it some self-deprecating moments because he understood just how silly it was.

4) So, I've already mentioned the melodrama. Some of this does, indeed, include Bella as a moaning zombie. Her nightmares are particularly stupid, as she continually screams into the night, annoying her father (who is so far continuing to be one of the better film version characters) along with the audience. However, one of the eye-rolling sequences of the book (at least for me) was when there are just four pages with the name of the month on it, showing how she just mopes about for four months after Edward leaves. This is actually handled very artfully in the film. Bella sits in a chair staring out the window, and the camera slowly rotates around her. As the camera gets back to showing out the window, it shows a different season outside while giving a subtitle of the month. Eventually, there is also some voice-over of her speaking out her emails to Alice, which was a nice touch that I don't remember from the book. I like how they use the emails to Alice throughout the film to show that she's actually missing other Cullens besides Edward (of course, the emails don't go through, but she keeps trying nonetheless).

5) In the first film, they added the climax fight that wasn't shown in the book. They even tossed in some action bits here and there throughout the film to keep the tempo going. So how did this one fare? There were some moments interspersed... nothing really major, though. But they also added in the scuffle with the Volturi at the end, which was awesome. The action looks much better in this film than it did in the first. It's much more stylized and fun. You can tell they had a bigger budget this time around. One of my favorite scenes in the film is when Charlie and Harry are out searching for the "wolves," and Victoria shows up. The whole action of the scene is so muted with the music and it's really nicely shot. Of course, all this leads up to the "big scene" that jump starts (no pun intended) the climax. But tying all of it together was a great way to make it flow into the ending.

So I said the first Twilight film was better than the book. I also said I hated the book of New Moon, but would hope, like its predecessor, the movie version would also be better than the book. Was I right in this assumption? Yes, I think I was. And it pisses me off that Hollywood seems capable of adapting a bad book into an entertaining movie, yet seems incapable of adapting a good book into one. But that's another post.

I can't, in right mind, give it the following score for being a good movie. The acting is mediocre at best (the best of it coming from Billy Burke, Ashley Greene, Michael Sheen, and Taylor Lautner). But that's what makes it so laughably good (in adding to the melodrama). The characters aren't particularly likable (except, ironically, for the characters played by the aforementioned actors... except Michael Sheen, but I only say that because his is a villain, and he isn't 'likable' in the same respect). The dialogue, most straight from the book, is nearly vomit inducing. But there's still just something about it that I liked. Maybe it's just a good 'bad' movie. So I'm giving it this score based solely on entertainment, I suppose. And I can't wait to love/hate the next one (assuming it, like the last two, is better than the book).


A Keanu 'Whoa'

TWILIGHT.

As some of you might know, I’ve read all the Twilight books. I don’t consider myself an avid fan, but I have read them all, and I believe there are some pretty entertaining bits to be found within them. I also have often said that, as opposed to the norm, the Twilight series would probably work better as a film series than a book series. Tonight, I have taken a step further into believing that very theory.

After Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) moves away from her mom in the big city of Phoenix, Arizona to the small town of Forks, Washington with her dad, Charlie (Billy Burke), she doesn’t think anything will ever get better for her. She’s clumsy, and she hates the cold and the rain, so of course Forks, a town laden with constant rain and chill, would be ideal for her, right? But then she meets Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), a mysterious young man at her high school who seems to loath the very sight of her upon their first meeting. But as they start to know each other, they start to get closer. And when Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) entices her curiosity over the true nature of the Cullens, Bella starts on a journey to discover the truth about the family… that they’re vampires (though they feed off animals instead). But this cannot stop the true love. Oh no! It must prevail… even after a dangerous Tracker vampire by the name of James (Cam Gigandet) shows up and will stop at nothing to get Bella all to himself.

So first let me talk about the movie as an adaptation. I’ve been reading a lot of things about how this movie is so different from the book and how you shouldn’t go in to this film expecting it to be anything like the reading experience. Did we see the same film? Seriously, the movie was pretty dead on with the book. Sure, there were a few new scenes, a couple cut scenes, and other things like that, but every major scene was there, every major character was there, and basically every important element of the book was counted for. There was even dialogue taken straight from the book, and a voice-over narration very much like Bella’s first-person narration in the book (in fact, some of it is directly from her narration in the book).

The casting was pretty much perfect, specifically the Cullen family, even more specifically Alice and Emmett. They were pretty much dead on with my imagination. The others worked really well, too. The only complaints I have in casting were Bella and Jacob, and only moreso the latter. And it’s not because the acting was bad. In fact, I thought Taylor Lautner acted it just fine. But in the book, Jacob was this massive hulk of a guy, nearly twice Bella’s size (something more like Emmett). And even if he were thin in the first book and got huge later, I have no idea how they're going to pull that off with this guy in the next couple films. But besides his looks, he was good. And my Bella complaint was moreso on how she acted the character, which is probably more of a director complaint than an actress complaint. The Bella in the book is much funnier, wittier, and sharp. The Bella in the movie is so freakin serious and overdramatic all the time. She so totally doesn’t become whiny, serious, and overdramatic until book two. Oh, and one more complaint when it came to characters… what the heck was up with Carlisle’s super-thick white makeup upon his introduction? It got better later, but damn… that was some hardcore thickness right there.

To get into a few more of the movie workings, I had a few issues with logistics in things they did in changing/adding stuff. First of all, they made it the middle of March at the beginning of the movie, as opposed to the book when I believe it’s closer to January. This doesn’t seem like that big of a deal… until you get to the parking lot wreck scene when the whole place is icy. Granted, I don’t live in Washington, but will the ground really be covered in ice in March/April? Another thing is that Edward is so overprotective of Bella, mostly because of how clumsy she is. So why on Earth would he take her to the top of an incredibly tall tree and then let her loose to climb it on her own (much less Bella actually be willing to do so)? That just seemed incredibly out of character for the both of them.

On some other positive sides, there was some good chemistry between characters, though the two characters I felt had the most chemistry aren’t the two most would think. I felt that the relationship between Bella and her father Charlie was done very well. When a specific thing happens towards the end of the movie, I actually felt really bad, much like I did when I read it in the book. There was also some good chemistry between Bella and Jacob, and I really did like Jacob in the film despite his size. And they even added more of him in, which was smart. In the first book, he had a really bit role, and then becomes this huge character come the second installment. But they upped his role in the first film, which, again, I really liked. Finally, of course, there was the good chemistry between Bella and Edward. It was pretty tense most of the time, as Edward gets upset a lot in the first book. Though there wasn’t nearly as much humor between the two of them in the film as there was in the book (I mean, it was there… just not as much. They focused more on the serious stuff in the film).

But one of the biggest flaws of the film is also one of the biggest flaws of the books: Edward and Bella's relationship is purely superficial. And what people aren't seeming to grasp, including the uber-fans of the book, is this flaw. In the movie, Edward and Bella argue a lot before suddenly falling head-over-heels for each other for no apparent reason, and then will do anything for each other. Well, sorry to break this to you, but the books are exactly the same. If you take away every superficial quality about Edward (and even Jacob brings this up in one of the books), there'd be absolutely no reason that Bella would love him like she did. The relationship comes from nothing, is based on nothing, and stays hollow for the entirety of the series. And that was emphasized even further within this movie, even to the chagrin of the fans who thought it otherwise. So, yet again, the movie keeps to the heart of the books just fine.

The film is no masterpiece by any means, just like the book isn’t a new classic (no matter how much the fan base of 15-year-old girls thinks it is). Both the books and the films, once they make the others, will simmer down with time. But I figure that if they stick to it like they’re doing now, by staying close to the book, yet altering it just slightly so that it fits good for a movie, and taking out all the bad writing and annoying little descriptions of Edward’s godly breath and godly this and that (though they did almost allude to all of that during one part of the movie), then I really do believe that the movie series will be much better than the book series. I anticipate the next film now, especially since I hated that book the most in the series… I can’t wait to see if they actually make it good. After all, they did a pretty good job with this one (and the following score is more based on entertainment value and adaptation abilities than actual quality of film... plus, when it comes to the Twilight series, you aren't in it for quality to begin with anyway, so it's all good).

A Keanu 'Whoa'