In Bruges

In Bruges is another one of those indie darling crime dramas with characters who have way too literate and stylish dialogue with each other while the simple plot moves things along at the pace of a lazy sunday drive.

When I read the reviews of this film when it played at sundance I expected to find something with a light touch and lots of witty banter. I got plenty of moments of almost Python-esque black absurdity, but the overall tone of the film was much more dramatic than I was expecting.
The film eventually grew on me, and I actually began to find Colin Farrel tolerable. 
He plays a hit man sent into exile in the Belgian city after accidentally shooting a child back in London. And the film basically deals with him and his partner's different ways of dealing with their time there.  
And there's some really funny stuff with a midget, played by Indie stalwart Peter Dinkledge as a surly coked up version of himself.
Halfway through Ralph Fiennes turns up as their boss, and I found it pretty exhilerating to watch him blow a gasket and quibble over wordplay.  It's not a great film, but it's the kind of thing you won't hate yourself for having watched on a lazy sunday.

In Bruges: B

The Golden Compass Loses Its Way

In "The Golden Compass" the filmmakers set a course for adventure but wind up wandering in the wilderness of exposition, stiff performances, and overblown cgi set pieces that are notable for their "jumanji-ish" crappiness.
This would be fantasy epic tells the story of a precocious little girl at an exclusive boarding school who is secretly given a golden compass that can reportedly reveal the truth that those in power so desperately want to cover up.
If a movie like this is to enchant audiences it has to make you feel for the characters, but the story falls flat, the little girl is more annoying than adorable, Nicole Kidman's face seems frozen in a sneer for the entire film, and Daniel Craig is given very little to do. The only one who adds some much needed spark and pizazz is Sam Eliot. He shows up as a cowboy airship pilot. It doesn't make any sense, but I kind of liked it.
Also there are armored polar bears. Now the idea of armored polar bears is admittedly intriguing, but these bears look too much like they should break out a coca-cola instead of doing battle. And when ever they interact with humans, you can almost see the green screen effects and mechanical doohickey's involved in making the scene.
I haven't read the books this film is based on, so it's quite possible that the same story in different hands could have hit the mark. The Lord of the Rings suffered a similar fate with a poorly reviewed animated version in the 70's which left fans unsatisfied until Peter Jackson got a hold of it. Needless to say, fans of these books will be waiting for quite a while to see any more stories up on the screen.

The Golden Compass: C-

Grindhouse

It seemed like a movie geeks wet dream. Tarantino, and Rodriguez together indulging themselves in an obsessively faithful recreation of the cheap bad-ass action and horror flicks they grew up on and studied so much.

But alas it crumbles into a disappointing genre exercise in self satisfaction as both filmmakers fitfully recreate a film breaking and the faded scratchy prints of old, but sadly forget to add any interesting stories or snappy dialogue.

The highlight of the three hour experiment is the fake trailers before and in between the film.

These are not available on the extended DVDs but you can watch the whole freaking exercise in its entirety on Starz, or you can find the trailers online and save yourself about three hours. I have a fondness for "machete," but Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving" gets points for pushing the disturbing factor to a giblet vomit inducing point.

Rodriguez' "Planet Terror" is first off. It dials up the sex immediately by starting things off with rose McGowan doing a pole dance. It only takes about 15 minutes or so before balls get chopped off, a deadly gas is released into the air and zombies start a chewing. While Rodriguez obviously has tried his best to cram all the sex, blood, guts, guns and big ass fast cars he can into this film, the results are just so so. I expected this to hit it out of the park, but instead it's just an infield single. I do give him props for devising a scene where McGowan has had her leg gnawed off by a zombie, and gets a Gatling gun attached in its place.

Tarantino's "Death Proof" is considered the better of the two, but I found it to be an even bigger disappointment.

I love good car crashes and all those good old fashioned chase scenes, but there's not enough pure action in this mindless exercise for me. The flimsy excuse for a story involves the maniacal Stuntman Mike who uses his reinforced stunt car as a deadly weapon to murder groups of hotties he sees come into town. I know stories are just supposed to be a clothesline to hang the car crashes on, but this just didn't cut it for me. There's are far too few car crashes, and when the big chase scene does come I found it strangely underwhelming. There aren't even any good Tarantino dialogues in this film either, it's all just dumb girl chatter. It's just plane boring.

Grindhouse: C

Atonement

As of now, with the lone exception of Michael Clayton (which no one really predicted would win anything anyway) I have seen four out of five of the best picture nominees this year. It's a personal best for me since in the past I have seen two or maybe three. This year three films wowed me and made me think "oh yeah, they deserve to be nominated." And then there's "Atonement."

Every few years or so the academy gets some weird bug up its behind and nominates an extremely ordinary film as one of the best of the year. It happened with "Ghost," it happened with "Chocolat" and it's happened again here.

Although the film is being marketed as one of those great love stories to entice women into thinking they're going to see "Sense and Sensibility Part Deux", it's not really a love story at all.
It's more about betrayal.

All the time I was watching it, I kept wondering what the big deal was.
Kiera Knightly pouts, James Mcavoy shows restrained passion.
They make love on the lawn, then they do it in the library, and that's pretty much all you see before a little girl's lies tear them apart. Then James Mcavoy shows restrained rage, they're torn asunder and that's pretty much it.

To be fair, there are a few twists and turns as we see the ramifications of that lie and eventually we see her complicated attempts to make peace, but it's not particularly moving or special in any way. And once you've seen Kiera Knightly in that green dress, the film really doesn't have much else to offer.

Atonement: C

King Of Kong: A Fistfull of Quarters

I must admit I've played a few video games in my life and in my formative years even had a subscription to Nintendo Power Magazine. I would scour the pages looking for the latest strategies and cheat codes to get ahead in Contra or Ninja Gaiden.

This is a movie made by and for people who play X-Box Live and their original n.e.s. all day long. The people who rarely venture outside because they're still trying to get past that infamous 15th level of Super Mario Brothers.

The story of the Donkey Kong world record holder, Billy Mitchell, and an unemployed father named Steve Wiebe who challenges the record aspires to be a great story of good and evil.
Mitchell comes off like a cocky s.o.b. who sends in the minions of the video game authorities to cast aspersions on any gamer that threatens to take his title. Wiebe seems like the humble everyman without connections trying to beat a system that seems rigged against him on charm and pure skill alone.

The film seems to think it's story has the dramatic tension of a Tom Clancy novel.
These are video games were talking about here, not the Cold War.
We're not talking about the Machiavellian machinations of an evil genius against a good hearted everyman just trying to do the right thing.
We're talking two maladjusted compulsive people being obsessed over and celebrated by a bunch of other maladjusted compulsive people. Billy Mitchell actually seems the slightly more sane of the two.

I found the subject matter just collapses under the weight if you try to read too much into it.
As a person at least familiar with gaming I knew about Donkey Kong, and so I found it somewhat interesting. But non-gamers would be bored to tears

King of Kong: B-

Rambo

Rambo is a man of few words, and it's a good thing because the words only get in the way of the explosions in this new fourth installment of the Rambo franchise.

We find Rambo working as a snake catcher in Thailand while civil war rages on in neighboring burma. And Rambo is enlisted to help a group of white missionaries deliver medical supplies to the war torn villagers. They predictably get captured and it's up to Rambo to rescue them and destroy an entire army pretty much by himself.

Stallone takes credit for writing and directing, but truth be told, the film is told in such broad strokes it could have been written by a ten year old. Everything that doesn't have to do with shooting or killing is reduced to a minimum.

In between spouting unintentionally hillarious one liners like "killing's as easy as breathing" and "you either live for nothing, or you die for something" there are plenty of severed heads, body parts flying, and stuff blowing up real good with a bare minimum of nuance. Oh, and Rambo rips a man's throat out with his bare hands.

It's probably the goriest of all the Rambo pictures, which was just fine with the almost exclusively male audience i saw it with on a cold february day. Rambo's no philosopher, but he knows how to deliver the goods.

Rambo: B-.
(best if you can find some likeminded friends to go with you and revel in its awfulness).

An Introduction

An Introduction

As a child I used to own the old book "The Golden Turkey Awards," and it began my life long fascination with celebrating and ridiculing hollywood's failures.
With so much cinematic bile flooding the multiplex, I think I should have lots of material to work with.
So rest assured, I won't kiss any behinds here.
If something leaves its audience feeling like they swallowed a spoonful of drano, I'll let you know.
Conversely, if something is so delightfully awful I'll let you know too.
Unlike my other site (filmeducation.blogspot.com), this one will be devoted to new and recent films that catch my eye.
And just like a funny english teacher who shows kids how to break the rules and discover new ideas while ridiculing those in authority, I'll be using standard letter grades.