2 In 1: MirrorMask and Stardust.

The theme for this 2 In 1 is Neil Gaiman. That’s right, the man of twisted fantasy. He has a great imagination and his work truly shows it. In fact, the first on this list, MirrorMask, is the movie I always turn to when I’m writing anything fantastical and have writer’s block. It always seems to help pull me out of it. So here goes.

MirrorMask.

MirrorMask is pure imagination, truly. It is twisted, imaginative, and incredibly hard to describe. But I’ll give it a shot, anyway. Most people want to run away and join the circus. Helena (Stephanie Leonidas) is in the circus and wants to run away and join real life. But after a big argument with her mother (Gina McKee), and her mother falls ill with some type of cancer, Helena grows depressed at having said certain things to her mother. So Helena falls asleep, has a crazy nightmare, and wakes up. But when she wakes up, she wakes up in another realm: a realm of imagination and incredibly bizarre things based on Helena’s drawings. She joins up with witty Valentine (Jason Barry) and discovers that a Shadow is destroying the kingdom of Light because the Queen of Light (Gina McKee, again) has basically fallen into a coma because a ‘charm’ has been stolen by the kingdom of Dark’s princess (Stephanie Leonidas, again). And to top it all off, this Anti-Helena has taken Helena's place in the real world to mess up her life. So now it’s up to Helena and Valentine to travel this realm and try to find this charm, even though they have no idea what it is or where to look, and find a way back home before it's too late.

Like The Wizard of Oz, almost every character portrayed in the fantasy realm is played by an actor or actress that portrays a character in the reality realm. The acting is great and a lot of the characters are pretty funny/witty, especially Valentine (so the script/dialogue is great, as well). And the plot is great and touching. You really feel Helena’s pain and fear for her mother. The whole movie can really be seen on a whole other level, for this dream reality being Helena’s way of dealing with her life (much like the kids in Bridge to Terabithia, except more constant).

The special effects are phenomenal. You can tell stuff isn’t real, but it’s so fitting with the world that it works, because the world is imagination. It’s all based on Helena’s drawings and surroundings in the normal world. Some of my favorite scenes include Giants Orbiting (amazing scene), the monkey/bird ‘Bobs’ scene, and the scene in which Helena is becoming Dark Helena via the jack-in-the-box women (which can be seen as a runner-up in my Best Random Song/Dance Numbers article). Visually, this movie is pure special effects, really.

When I first saw this movie, I was like ‘what the hell did I just watch?’ But the more I thought about it, and the more times I watched it, I grew to love it more and more. In fact, I watched it again last night and gained even more love for it. Not many movies do that with me (Shaun of the Dead was another movie that this happens to me with). This was really a tough movie to score. I went back and forth a lot, but I suppose its gotta be done.

Royale With Cheese

Stardust.

This one is much more light-hearted than the previous (and that’s a cool thing about Neil Gaiman. He can write the full spectrum. If you see/read Stardust, you would never think he was the same person to write American Gods. Well, maybe I would, because I’m the same way with my writing, some dark some light). Anyway, this one is about Tristan (Charlie Cox), who lives in the town of Wall, which is, amazingly enough, surrounded by a wall. Outside the wall is a realm of magic. Tristan is in love/lust with Victoria (Sienna Miller), even though she’s going to be proposed to in a week by somebody else. So when they see a falling star, he promises that he will cross the wall and bring her back the fallen star in exchange for her hand in marriage. But when he gets there, the star turns out to have taken a human form, Yvaine (Claire Danes). Meanwhile, a witch named Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer) is after the fallen star for her heart so she can gain youth. Simultaneously, evil Prince Septimus (Mark Strong) is after a jeweled necklace that knocked Yvaine out of the sky that she now wears around her neck, so that he can become the next king. Complicated much?

Anywho, this is one heck of an adventure. From Robert De Niro’s Captain Shakespeare and beyond, this movie is just plain fun. There is magic all over the place, comedy spread throughout, and it just has a cool story. Sure, there’s a ton going on, but it never seems convoluted in any way.

The acting is great, especially from Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert De Niro, who you could tell had loads of fun with their roles (especially De Niro). And once Tristan gets his makeover, his character gets a bit cooler, as well.

The special effects are pretty decent. The coolest scene has to be the Voodoo doll sword fight toward the end. The actor basically had to be on wires and act as a marionette, fighting with his eyes closed (avoiding saying who to not spoil those who haven’t seen it yet, though it’s relatively spoiled in the movie’s trailer anyway).

There’s not much more to say about the movie. It was a magical, fun, and funny adventure. I think it would be really hard to dislike this movie, honestly. I could see some people being turned off by parts of it, but it just seems to me to be this feel-good fantasy adventure.

A Keanu 'Whoa'

RUN FATBOY RUN.

As Shaun of the Dead is basically one of my top favorite movies of all time, and Hot Fuzz is amazingly awesome, as well, I couldn’t help but go to see another Simon Pegg-vehicle (even if it’s directed by David Schwimmer, which still boggles my mind). Run Fatboy Run is about Dennis (Simon Pegg) who runs out on his bride-to-be, Libby (Thandie Newton), on their wedding day… and she was pregnant, as well. Five years later, he’s an out-of-weight lingerie store security guard who rents a small apartment underneath an Indian father/daughter. He still gets to see his son and such, but then he discovers that Whit (Hank Azaria) is now seeing Libby, and it’s pretty serious. Whit is also running this marathon that’s coming up in less than a month, so Dennis decides to try and prove he can finish something in his life by running and finishing the marathon, as well. Unfortunately, he kind of gets stuck in the situation when his best friend, Gordon (Dylan Moran), bets more than he has that Dennis will finish the race. So now they must work as hard as possible to get Dennis into better shape in time for the marathon so he can prove himself to his ex and his son and gain their respect (and maybe, just maybe, win her back, too).

I’ve read it all about this movie: If you liked Shaun or Fuzz, you’ll hate this one! That’s not even remotely true. See, I usually only laugh at movies in theater because other people are laughing and it’s contagious (only to later discover when I buy the movie and watch it alone at home that it wasn’t nearly as funny as I remember). But because there were literally only 3 other people in the theater with me, I can safely say that I laughed so much at this movie because it was truly funny. I actually laughed so much I thought the other people were gonna think I was weird for laughing at stuff they weren’t.

The acting was great, as always, and Simon Pegg has great comedic timing, as did Dylan Moran. One issue, though, is that he really isn’t fat as much as he’s relatively out of shape. Though the title really comes from an insult by another character. And the beginning is a bit slow at points, but once it really starts, it gets goin. Another slightly bothersome thing was that you have no idea why they used an American actor (Hank Azaria) for the Whit character until towards the end of the movie when it releases a plot point. But until then, you’re like “Interesting that they used an American for the role when the whole thing is set in England…” Also, funny side-note… Dennis has a poster of Team America in his apartment. I just thought that was mildly humorous in a few different ways…

I also really liked that it did something similar back to Shaun and Fuzz, which is where a lot of things are repeated in different scenarios (though not to the degree of the previous two movies). There’s really not all that much more I can say about it. Simon Pegg wins again. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was no Shaun or Fuzz, but it was still done amazingly well.

A Keanu 'Whoa'

Video Game Movies: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

I haven’t done this article-type since the Harry Potter one, which was one of my first articles, so this outta be interesting. With the advent of another live-action Street Fighter movie coming (centered around Chun-Li… who is being played by the non-Asian Kristin Kreuk), I felt it might be a good time to talk about Video Game Movies. Video Game Movies have been the bane of movie existence for some time. Some are pretty good, others decent, but most are just God-awful and incredibly horrible in paying the original source material homage. The following five movie series’ (or just movies) will detail what is good, bad, and ugly about each. But you don’t always have to be a fan of the games to be able to say whether or not it was a bad movie (though it does help some). So without further ado, here we go.

NOTE: Uwe Boll movies were automatically disqualified from this list due to none of them having any quality outside of ‘ugly’.

Super Mario Bros. (1993).

Intro: What’s a video game movie list without this one? Seriously. It would just be incomplete. Super Mario Bros., based on the insanely popular video game series of the same name, starred Bob Hoskins as Mario, John Leguizamo as Luigi, Dennis Hopper as Koopa, and Samantha Mathis as Princess Daisy. Though I must admit I haven’t seen this one since I was younger.

The Good: The movie might be bad, but it had some fun moments. Yoshi, after all, looked pretty cool. Also, those jumping boot things that they wore later on into the movie were cool. And Samantha Mathis was pretty hot in this movie, I have to say. Oh, and getting their red and green uniforms toward the end was funny/cool.

The Bad: Probably the acting, but it’s been too long to say. If I had to add something to this category, though, I’d say the ending. It left it at this huge ambiguous cliffhanger that really isn’t explained at all… and there’s probably never going to be a sequel… so that sucks. Most of everything else pretty much falls into the next category, though.

The Ugly: The story is absolutely nothing like the game. It’s like the writers tried to pay homage, but then got scared that the audience might not be able to grasp or comprehend the fantasy aspect of it, so they added a scientific twist to the whole thing. Instead of being just another world, it became a parallel universe where all the dinosaurs went when the meteorite crashed. Then they evolved into humans, as if they were afraid of having walking dinosaurs. And the Goombas were just de-evolved human-forms with huge bodies and tiny heads (when it should have been the OTHER way around). Toad was a hippie with a guitar and harmonica who was turned into a Goomba. Koopa was just an old dude who turned into a Raptor or something for roughly 2.5 seconds at the end instead of being a bulky monster dinosaur thing. It was just completely screwed up.

The Mortal Kombat Movies (1995 and 1997).

Intro: The first movie was actually pretty decent and fun. The second movie was, well, not. The first one revolved around just the basic characters from the first game or so. The second one… well, we’ll get to that.

The Good: The first movie was entertaining, stayed true to characters, and had some cool action. Scorpion and Sub-Zero were awesome. The Liu Kang/Reptile fight is wicked awesome. Goro was cool looking, too. I liked how they even threw in signature moves for each character. And Liu Kang doing the Hadoken or whatever at the end was awesome. The second movie… well, it was cool seeing all those characters on screen. And the Scorpion/Smoke/Sub-Zero fight was neat.

The Bad: First of all, Johnny Cage dies within the first five minutes. How lame is that? Second, the bad guy was lame and wasn’t nearly as creepy as Shang Tsung. Third, the dude who played Rayden changed (with a shorter haircut), only to be explained by him becoming mortal or something. Finally, the woman who played Sonya also changed… pfft. They kill off the character when the actor is the same, but they keep the characters whose actors change.

The Ugly: While seeing all the brand new characters from the later games on screen was cool, there were just far too many trying to be incorporated, and the story suffered for it. Not to mention that there were just some incredibly pointless scenes. It made the movie muddled and nearly pointless.

Silent Hill (2006).

Intro: Again, based on the games of the same name, Silent Hill is a creepy survival-horror game (supposedly one of the scariest). I haven’t played any of the games, but I’ve read that the movie was similar to the first game (I believe), but changed up a bit (such as making the main character a woman instead of a man).

The Good: This movie did have some pretty creepy moments, most specifically the ‘darkness’ scenes with Pyramid Head and all the other monsters (The Janitor was crazy! And I don’t mean the one from Scrubs). The story was done pretty well, too, as everything that comes together at the end was all pretty cool. The acting wasn’t too bad, either.

The Bad: After the first viewing, the movie gets pretty boring, especially the beginning. And the scenes with the husband (Sean Bean) are almost completely irrelevant and pointless. In fact, the movie was written with only a full-female cast, but the studio wanted some men in there, so they added the husband’s side of the story. It’s obvious that it was just tacked on with no real purpose.

The Ugly: The ending basically ruins this movie for me. I try to pretend the movie ends as soon as they drive off away from Silent Hill. But no… they go home in a world covered in the misty stuff never again to come back to the husband/father… and the little girl is still possessed or whatever by her evil half… and the sequel doesn’t seem to be coming until 2010 at the earliest, with possibly none of the cast from the first movie involved.

The Resident Evil Trilogy (2002, 2004, 2007).

Intro: The Resident Evil Trilogy is an odd puppy. The first movie is nothing like the games. The second movie tries to overcompensate. The third movie has to deal with the repercussions of the first two. So let’s get into it, shall we?

The Good: The first movie has the overall feel of the games, and the licker is pretty cool. The second movie has some of the characters from the games, such as Carlos, Jill, and the Ashford family. It also gives us Nemesis and S.T.A.R.S. The third movie removes Jill the Ashford’s and gives us Claire (sans her brother) and Wesker. The action that comes along with Alice is pretty cool, as she really is a badass, and Milla Jovovich is always cool. Oh, and the big fight at the end of the third movie with Tyrant was wicked cool.

The Bad: As stated, the first movie is nothing like the games at all in story. And you don’t even know Alice’s name until the ending credits. The Mansion was barely used, either. The second movie added in more game elements, but turned it from survival-horror to action. The third movie, unfortunately, had to wrap up all the crazy storylines going on, which made it fall symptom to something similar to the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

The Ugly: Alice, a character completely unrelated to the games, was way too powerful of a character. She was literally almost unbeatable. That is… until the third movie, when suddenly she had weaknesses and limits to her abilities. Also, they cut and added characters in and out of these movies like they were nothing. Two characters major to the second movie (Jill and Angie Ashford) supposedly die between the second and third movies. Not to mention that a lot of the character backgrounds for the ones that were taken from the games were a lot different.

The Final Fantasy Movies (2001 and 2005).

Intro: There should technically only be one Final Fantasy movie (Advent Children), because Spirits Within really shouldn’t count. But we’ll get to those shortly. I’m ending with these two movies because they are perfect examples of how both not to make a video game movie and how to do it perfectly.

The Good: Regardless of anything, the graphics for both movies are nothing short of stunning. Forget The Polar Express, these movies were screwed out of recognition for their simply beautiful CGI. Now, as for Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children… that is how you do a Video Game Movie. Sure, they might have been doing it to cash in, but it seemed purely fan service. Every important character was there, it picked up soon after the game ended, and the story (while there isn’t much of one) is pretty cool. The voice acting, believe it or not, is done really nicely, too (with one exception). Oh, and the music is amazingly beautiful. A large portion is remixed from the game, but the game music was beautiful anyway. Finally, the action in is some of the coolest, most badass action I’ve ever seen in an animated movie (and I do watch anime). As for anything good about Spirits Within… well… the story was good, and it had a lot of really good voice actors (Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, James Woods, Keith David, Alec Baldwin, Ming-Na).

The Bad: Well, the only ‘bad’ goes to Advent Children, as most of the rest of Spirits Within would be under the next category. So anyway, Advent Children’s only bad side is that it really is a fan-service movie. If you haven’t played the game, you’ll probably be incredibly lost into most of the stuff happening (as it is a sequel to the game). Well, you might not be incredibly lost, as there is a voice-over narration that explains almost every key point you need to know, but you won’t get the deeper meanings or a full understanding of everything happening. Also, what the hell is up with the American voice for Cait Sith? Why they hell does he sound like a drunken Irishman? Especially since he’s actually a robot controlled by Reeve, who is even voiced via telephone before Cait Sith shows up in the movie, and is not a drunken Irishman…

The Ugly: This is pretty simple. Spirits Within had absolutely nothing, nada, zip to do with Final Fantasy. The first Resident Evil movie had more to do with its source material than Spirits Within, which is sad. There was one connection… a dude named Cid… but it was even SPELLED wrong! In the movie, they spelled it Sid. The movie itself isn’t actually all that awful… but it’s no Final Fantasy. There’s nothing even remotely similar to a Final Fantasy story that would be in a game. They should have gone with the original title idea and named it ‘Gaia’ instead of trying to cash in on the FF brand. That way, it probably wouldn’t have been boycotted like it was, it would have made more money, and Squaresoft wouldn’t have bankrupted like it did and be forced to merge with their rival company to stay afloat to become Square-Enix (it’s ironic that Final Fantasy was the game to keep the company going in the first place, and the FF movie was what basically killed them).

Conclusion: So all in all, I would like to conclude with this: Uwe Boll, stop making movies, you horrible, horrible man. You’re ruining video games and movies simultaneously. That is all. Oh, and people need to make more movies like Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children.

Bad Movies. Bad Memory. Fun Times.

These are the movies that you saw ages ago (whatever bracket of years that might be for you), that are pretty bad movies in general when you think back, and you haven’t seen them since you were younger (for the most part)… yet you distinctly remember certain scenes and can’t help but smile. Most of the time they’re B-Horror movies, but there are exceptions. This is a list of 6 movies that take me back down memory lane. Some may be recognizable, some might not. Either way, gotta pay mad respect! … Or not.

Arcade (1993).

Who You’ll Recognize: Peter Billingsley (from A Christmas Story) and Seth Green.

Plot: A bunch of teens play a new virtual reality video game that really kills.

Scene(s) I Remember: Towards the end of the movie, the main female ends up going directly inside the main gaming unit to play the game from there. She has to beat the game in order to finally bring it down. There’s a scene within the game in which she reaches two Ferrymen, a liar and a truthteller, who she can ask one question to only one of them to help her find out which one will take her to the place she needs to go next. I remembered this scene because of the Liar’s Paradox and how mind-blowing the paradox actually is. The same paradox is also used in the movie Labyrinth with David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly.

Other: I’d love to see this movie again, just to see how laughably bad it really is, but I seriously doubt it’ll ever see the light of day on DVD.

The Gate (1987).

Who You’ll Recognize: Stephen Dorff.

Plot: A bunch of kids are left home alone for the weekend. After playing a record backwards, they unknowingly open a gateway to hell in their backyard and are then plagued by little demons and scary phone calls.

Scene(s) I Remember: I remember a few with this one. I remember the really creepy phone calls and I believe a melting phone. I remember the tiny little demon creatures and, of course, the incredibly large demon creature. I’m pretty sure they were all stop-motion monsters, which look incredibly stupid and unscary today.

Other: I remember parts of this movie being really creepy, like the phone call stuff. Though I think the ending of the movie with the stop-motion creatures would definitely ruin it for me now.

Pulse (1988).

Who You’ll Recognize: Joey and Matthew Lawrence.

Plot: Basically a ‘Ghost-In-The-Machine’ story in which a murderous pulse of electricity moves from house to house and possesses electronics and other household things in order to kill or wreak havoc.

Scene(s) I Remember: I remember a scene in which the pulse possesses a shower, somehow locking the woman in it, and turning up the heat to ‘magma’, boiling her alive. I also remember a scene in which I believe Joey Lawrence’s character is trying to go out a broken window or something, and it slams down on his hand, the glass going through it (if I remember correctly). Crazy stuff. I also think I remember a guy getting locked in his car and the pulse not letting the garage door open, so the exhaust got to him or something.

Other: Nothing, really.

House (1986).

Who You’ll Recognize: Nobody, really.

Plot: A Vietnam vet, now a horror novelist, comes spiraling down when his son disappears in his aunt’s house. When his aunt dies, however, he goes to live in the house for a bit. Unfortunately, the house is a bit demonic, and he must fight his way into finding his son again.

Scene(s) I Remember: I’m pretty sure both of these scenes I remember are from this movie and not the sequel. One scene is when the main guy breaks a mirror in his bathroom and finds a deep bit of emptiness. So he gets a rope and climbs on down, but is attacked by a bunch of winged demons. He ends up falling into a river in the middle of Vietnam or something, takes a deep breath, swims down, and comes up out of a swimming pool in his backyard. The other scene isn’t really a scene, but more of a character… the big skeletal war buddy comes back to exact revenge or something. I just remember them fighting each other and the skeletal guy ends up getting a grenade in him or something.

Other: I’m a pretty big fan of Horror Comedies these days, so I’d love to go back and see this movie again. It’d be a fun one, I think.

Guyver (1991).

Who You’ll Recognize: Mark Hamill.

Plot: A dorky kid accidentally bashes his head against an alien mechanism which merges with his body, allowing him to become a cyborg-like superhero.

Scene(s) I Remember: When Mark Hamill turns into a big lobster-creature and dies.

Other: This movie, as well as its sequel, is just so bizarre and freaky that it could be pretty cool. The creatures are just people in crappy suits, but The Guyver suit itself is just freakin cool. But what else would you expect from a movie based on Japanese Manga/Anime?

Howard the Duck (1986).

Who You’ll Recognize: Lea Thompson, Jeffrey Jones, Tim Robbins.

Plot: A duck from a parallel universe gets sucked to Earth and teams up with a singer and a scientist to try and stop an alien that is currently possessing another scientist from destroying the world.

Scene(s) I Remember: Oh man, what isn’t to remember about this movie? A bathtub with a naked duck with human-like breasts, a electric-charged Jeffrey Jones rampaging through a diner, and the big showdown at the end with a really bizarre-looking alien monster.

Other: Of course I had to mention this movie. This is like… the king of all bad B-Movies. I used to love this movie as a kid… but I have to say, I watched it again a few months back and realized just how God-awful it is.

Closing Words: If I think of more movies, I’ll create another post. This one was more dedicated to the horror/sci-fi genres. I thought of a few more, but they weren’t within either of those boundaries, so I didn’t include them. What are some of y’all’s movies for this kinda thing?

DRILLBIT TAYLOR.

Have you ever wondered what Superbad would have been like had the kids been starting their Freshman year of high school instead of ending their Senior year? And what if the movie was just rated PG-13 instead of R because all the dirty talk and sex jokes were removed? And the alcohol was also removed, so that the movie was just basically about acceptance (and getting a girl to notice you)? Then Drillbit Taylor is the movie for you! Drillbit Taylor is about a couple loser kids (who pick up a third along the way) who are starting high school off on the wrong foot. Wade (Nate Hartley), Ryan (Troy Gentile), and Emmit (David Dorfman) are three dorky kids trying to stay alive in high school, as two bullies, Filkins (Alex Frost) and Ronnie (Josh Peck), won’t leave them alone. So they go out and hire a bodyguard, Drillbit Taylor (Owen Wilson), who is actually a bum just trying to rip off the kids so he can get enough money to go to Canada. But then he starts getting attached to them.

I’ll start off by clarifying my opening statements. Really, if you strip down Superbad like I did, it really would be this movie. The three main kids are an incredible amount (even in looks) like the three from Superbad. However, that doesn’t make this movie super bad (… I know, bad joke). It was actually really funny. It’s hard to get me to laugh out loud in movies these days, but I found myself laughing quite a bit with this one.

Unfortunately, there are some downsides. A lot of the jokes were hit or miss. There were some pretty funny ones, but others were just silly and unneeded. One was actually kinda disturbing (the step-dad on the vibrating chair). The acting was… alright. Owen Wilson was good, as was Nate Hartley (for the most part). Troy Gentile was just awful at times, but sometimes he was okay. Alex Frost and Josh Peck as the bullies were really good, though Josh Peck’s character was really underused, I thought. Stephen Root makes a couple appearances as the high school principal, and his part is alright and has its moments. And then we have Leslie Mann (AKA Judd Apatow’s wife, who appears in every movie he’s linked to). Her part was completely unnecessary and added nothing to the movie. The relationship with Drillbit was pointless and had no chemistry whatsoever.

You can really tell this movie was toned down from the other Apatow productions, but it doesn’t suffer too much from it. The movie didn’t really need any excessive nudity, swearing, or sex-talk. It worked for what it was. I really wanted to give this movie a higher score, but there were just some things that brought it down a notch. However, I think giving it this rating is ironic within itself.

I Am McLovin!

There Will Be PokeMon.

Haha, oh my God, I just had to share this. One of my favorite YouTube sensations, Smosh, just came out with their newest video... a spoof of the ending to There Will Be Blood. And... well... just watch. It's hilarious. And if you haven't seen There Will Be Blood and have been living under a rock and don't know how it ends, this is the link given in the 'description box' listed in the beginning of the video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ThZI-p8SKe0.

Rental Review: Eye of the Dolphin.

I love dolphins. Kids’ movies can be cool when they’re done right. So I rented this in hopes it would be pretty good. Apparently, I was wrong. Alyssa (Carly Schroeder) is a troubled teen after her mother gets killed in a boating accident and drowns. She ends up acting out in school (by making excellent grades, listening to her iPod, and smoking pot), which makes her get expelled. So her grandmother decides to let her know that her father, Dr. James Hawk (Adrian Dunbar), is still alive and working with dolphins in the Bahamas. They decide to go (right when her father is facing issues with/cancellation of his research), and end up meeting her father’s friends and partners, the father/daughter Daniel (George Harris) and Tamika (Christine Adams). Her father proceeds to be an awful father to her, while Daniel, Tamika, and the dolphins try to work together to ‘fix’ her.

So let’s start with the acting. Carly Schroeder, who you may or may not recognize as an all-grown-up version of the best friend of the little brother from the old Disney show Lizzie McGuire (did I lose you there?), gives anywhere from a bad to a so-so performance. The grandmother is just awful. In fact, to make this short, the only good thing to come from this movie acting-wise was the vastly underused George Harris, but that’s to be expected. I mean, the man is Kingsley Shacklebolt. Christine Adams isn’t too bad, either.

The script and the dialogue are horrible, as well. The story is so by-the-books that it’s ridiculous. The dialogue is stiff, cheesy, and just plain bad (and, as I said, the delivery doesn’t help much, either). There’s really not much more to say about the story. Some of the characters are just plain jerks when it is really unnecessary and just being done to help further plot.

The cinematography is basic stuff you might see in a TV movie… nothing special… like the rest of the movie. I’m really not sure what else I can say about this movie. And the ending is mind-boggling. Ignore if you care, but they spend the whole movie trying to make it so that the dolphins won't have to deal with tourists in their space and they can be free and be studied in peace. So what is the final resolution? Basically to create a Sea World-like environment where the dolphins can be studied in tiny cages in which tourists can hang in and around. Seriously. There was more of a scientific reasoning behind it, but call it what you might... it's still taking away the entire point. Might as well score it now.

The Zed Word

(By the way, if you're curious, the only reasons I scored it that high was due to random bikini scenes throughout, as well as George Harris' performance).

2 In 1: Across the Universe and August Rush.

This 2 In 1 focuses on two movies where the music is key to the movie. The first, Across the Universe, is one I’ve been wanting to see for a while and just recently rented. The second, August Rush, is one I first saw in theater and just watched for a second time. So without further ado…

Across the Universe.

Across the Universe was not what I expected, and, frankly, as a fan of musicals, I was a bit disappointed. Jude (Jim Sturgess) goes to America to find his father and meets Max (Joe Anderson) and falls in love with Max’s sister, Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). A bunch of Beatles songs are sung. Max is drafted. The 1960s ensue.

I guess I’ll start with the good. The movie’s renditions of the songs were, for the most part, really good. And the singing was good. I also liked how some of the props and such became part of the music (like in Atonement). Also, visually, the movie was stunning (with a few exceptions around the middle, such as The Magic Schoolbus and the incredibly random circus, which were just annoying). My favorite song is “Let It Be” near the beginning. It just felt like a really powerful song and scene in the movie. I also liked “Come Together” right afterward, because it was so random (hobos, hookers, and pimps singing bluesy). Ironically, neither of these songs were sung by the main cast (with the exception of one line at the end of “Come Together.”

Now for the bad. The story is nearly non-existent and disjointed, and the songs sometimes suffered from what I like to call “High School Musical Syndrome.” In other words, it was overly obvious that the actors were lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track. And oftentimes the musical numbers weren’t musical numbers at all. They would either start as a musical number and turn into a music video with the songs playing over a nearly unrelated-to-the-song montage where you never see the singer, or it would start with said montage and end with the singer. It just didn’t feel like a musical, but instead one really long music video medley of Beatles covers. And a lot of the time (though not all the time), as I said, the songs didn’t seem to match up with what was going on… or it was overly forced and just seemed to be a random fluff scene that was only in the movie so the song could be included (which was a huge chunk of the movie). A lot of this was remedied by the end of the movie (to a degree), but by that point, the movie had become so disjointed and boring that I no longer really cared.

As for the acting, it was… okay. The only character I really grew attached to was Jude, and I wasn’t even overly caring about him. It was just hard to get attached to anything in the movie. I really can’t think of anything else to say about this movie. It was good to look at (most of the time, when it wasn’t being just plain weird), and it was good to listen to, but I don’t think it really worked as a movie, nor as a musical.

Stop Saying Okay! Okay.

August Rush.

There are a couple good ways to describe this movie. The first is actually said near the beginning of the movie: “I believe in music the way some people believe in fairy tales.” This movie is basically like a modern day fairy tale with a strong musical theme. The second way to describe this movie would be as a musical with (almost) nothing but instrumentals. August Rush is about three different stories: The first is about young Evan (Freddie Highmore), left to an orphanage, who has a keen ear for music. He runs away from the orphanage to the big city of New York and meets up with Wizard (Robin Williams), a homeless musician who uses homeless kids to help make a profit in exchange for giving them a place to stay. Wizard ends up dubbing Evan with a better performer name, August Rush. His adventure grows from there. The second story is about his mother, Lyla (Keri Russell), a concert musician who learns of her son’s existence and tries to find him. The third story is about his father, Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), an Irishman in a rock band who loses the musical faith and tries to find the woman (Lyla) he once had a one-night fling with.

This movie is all about the music, and the music is beautiful. From the mixing of concert strings and rock guitar to church choir to just noises of the busy streets, the music is mesmerizing. As I stated previously, this movie is like a musical for instrumental music (with a few vocals thrown in every now and then), and the music is wonderful.

There are also some great visual effects, as well, such as the stunning opening sequence in the tall grass. There’s some good camera choices and lighting choices, as well, which make the movie a joy to watch. There are a couple mistakes noticeable here and there, such as a scene in which Louis is speaking but his mouth is saying something completely different. There was also a scene that was fixed between theater and DVD, apparently, as in the theater version you could clearly see Freddie Highmore’s mic pack as he stood up after first meeting Terrence Howard’s character. But those are just nitpicky things, really.

The acting is pretty good all around, even to Robin Williams, whose character you can’t help but both equally dislike and feel sorry for (he alludes very clearly the kind of childhood he had). Yeah, it’s completely not the type of character advertised in the previews. There’s really not much else to say. Great music, good visuals, good acting, good story… overall great movie.

A Keanu 'Whoa'

Rental Review: Gone Baby Gone.

This is for movies I rent instead of see in theater that I just feel like reviewing for the heck of it… and to start it off, we’ll go with Gone Baby Gone.

Ben Affleck’s directorial debut was even better than I thought it was gonna be. Gone Baby Gone is about two private detectives (and couple), Patrick (Casey Affleck) and Angie (Michelle Monaghan), who are hired to find a missing girl by the girl’s aunt and uncle. Teaming up with police Captain Doyle (Morgan Freeman) and Detectives Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton), they try to uncover what actually happened to the little girl so they can get her back to her druggie mother (Amy Ryan).

The movie was confusing at times, moreso toward the middle when they’re going through all the suspects and giving rapid-fire gangster names left and right, making it hard to remember who is who and who is doing what. But by the end of the movie, everything is so perfectly explained, the confusion is just a distant issue. But the story is magnificent. There are some great moral dilemmas showcased by the movie, which is great (yet uncomfortable) for the audience, as it makes you think about what you would do in the situation. What is right and what is wrong? Does it change due to circumstance? Those are the main questions the movie asks.

The acting is top notch, with great performances by Affleck, Freeman, and Harris. But the real performance was given by Amy Ryan, and I can see why she was nominated for the part. It might be hard to hear what is being said due to the thick Boston accents (and the fact that Casey Affleck kinda slurs his words together, an issue I had with him in The Assassination of Jesse James). I’ve read about people who had to watch this movie with subtitles so they knew what was being said. But I followed it well enough.

Overall, it was a great movie, and I thought it was a lot tighter and, dare I say, better than No Country For Old Men (great movie, but horrible ending that pretty much ruins the rest of it). I’m now rather shocked that Gone Baby Gone didn’t get more nominations for the Oscars. It really was snubbed.

A Keanu 'Whoa'

(P.S. In an age where a lot of movies are given odd titles that have little reference to the movie, I was happy when I heard the title of this movie actually used in dialogue within it. You don’t see that incredibly often anymore (“There Will Be Blood”…?).)

DOOMSDAY.

The best way to describe Doomsday is “oddly entertaining.” The first half is like mixing 28 Days/Weeks Later with Mad Max, and the second half is like mixing King Arthur, Gladiator, and Mad Max. Like I said: odd. It’s like a comic-book premise without being a comic book. The plot of Doomsday is thus: Roughly 30 years after a major plague (the Reaper Virus) spread through the upper section of Britain (namely Scotland), the virus has reappeared in the safe zone. The government gets Bill Nelson (Bob Hoskins) to get his best soldier, Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), to head up a team into the quarantined area before the Doomsday Contingency Plan (flooding and killing all of London) is performed. Why? Because they’ve noticed that there are people still alive inside (via satellite images), which means there must be a cure. And the only way there could possibly be a cure is if Dr. Kane (Malcolm McDowell), a scientist/doctor who got stuck behind, had found one. Unfortunately, when they get there, they discover that they really aren't alone... and that's a problem.

As I said, Doomsday is an odd mixture of things. In all honesty, it should have been called Doomsday: Randomness on Screen. The first major section of the movie was a lot like the 28 ___ Later… movies, in a way. It was really a horror/suspense kinda deal. Then, quite a ways in, the punk guys show up, led by a crazy dude named Sol (pronounced Saul). They’re survivors of the initial outbreak who have broken from all law and are living savagely, violently, and sado-masochistically (…seriously, there’s a random dude in all black leather, including a full leather mask over his face, and he’s constantly in chains). They’re also cannibalistic. Not too long after that, the movie gets medieval with people dressed up like they are walking about the Renaissance Festival. But during this stuff, there’s a Gladiator-like coliseum fight (Telamon is freakin awesome looking). After that, there’s a huge and incredibly crazy car chase sequence. For a car chase with no traffic, this sequence is maybe a few notches below Death Proof (because that one was awesome. This one doesn’t come close to that, but it’s still really cool).

Oh, and did I mention the blood and gore? My God, was there a lot of it. Nothing is safe in this movie, from people to bunnies and cows. Blood is excessive (It’s almost a ridiculous amount, as you might find in any Comic Book). The action is pretty cool, for what there is of it. I think my favorite fight was the (too short) sword fight about halfway in. Oh, and the main character can remove her eyeball from her socket and use it like a wireless webcam kinda thing. Nifty (and random). As for music, it was pretty cool, though the main theme reminded me WAY too much of the main theme from the 28 ____ Later… movies. It was almost identical, but with a few differences.

So really, if you shut off your brain and don’t think about all the movies this is ripping off (and don’t mind a bit of blood), this movie is really cool. The acting is done pretty well, for the most part, except for the dude who played Canaris. He got on my nerves with his whispery voice that sounded like he’d had one too many cigarettes, not to mention his stiff acting ability. The movie was over-the-top, random, and pretty fun when you just give yourself in to it.

I Am McLovin!

(Update: Thinking about it... this is a lot like this director's previous film, The Descent, in one specific way: The first half (pre-Punks) has very good atmosphere and is naturally suspenseful. The second half just gets bizarre and introduces random things that almost make the movie worse than it could have been (i.e. the creatures of The Descent).