Scribe & Green on the BIG screen

There are far too many people out there writing “reviews of movie-films & articles about them with absolutely no clue what the hell they’re talking about." Here are 2 more of them! (Well, one of us knows what the h___ we're talking about, but we'll leave it up to you to decide who that is...) Ultimately, can two people as opposite as Scribe and Green agree on anything?? That's where the fun begins. Won't you join us? (Every now and then we'll add a guest review, just for kicks.)

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Untraceable

GREEN’S “YOU KNOW YOU’D WATCH IT TOO” REVIEW:

Creepy. From the opening scene to the end, that’s what this movie is. Creepy because you know there’s probably some computer hacker geek who hasn’t thought about trying to figure out a way to actually kill people and broadcast it live over the Internet, just like the killer does in this movie. In addition, the sick part is you would probably watch it because you‘d be curious. Heck, I probably would too, for the very same reason, loath as I am to admit it.

I've said it before and it bears repeating: Diane Lane is simply one of the best actresses in the business today. Period. Just as underrated as her real life husband, Josh Brolin ("No Country for Old Men".) In this movie, Lane takes a role that five or ten years ago would have automatically had a male lead, probably the likes of Arnold or maybe Harrison Ford, Denzel Washington or someone comparable, and made it her own. She makes for a very credible FBI agent and brings a toughness to the character, yet the story still allows her to be compassionate as well. Colin (son of Tom) Hanks and Billy Burke are both excellent as the colleague and the cop. Joseph Cross is sufficiently creepy as Owen Reilly. Director Gregory Hoblit does a good job of keeping the story flowing and moving in the right direction.

The script follows the basic action/thriller/serial killer plot and will not wow you. You know - unknown bad guy emerges, kills a few people in horrific but original ways, stumps the authorities for a bit then eventually gets taken down by the local law enforcement agency. Still it is a compelling story because you want to see the gruesome killings and you want to see the killer brought to justice.

The DVD contains some excellent featurettes which are very informative and worthwhile viewing.

It has been quite a while since I have been weirded out by a movie but this one did exactly that. The DVD case proclaims “Untraceable” to be the Internet age’s version of “Silence of the Lambs.” Maybe it’s as good as that film was, maybe it isn’t. What it is is a good, suspenseful movie. I’d say well worth the 101 minutes of your valuable time.


**** out of *****

SCRIBE'S I CAN'T BELIEVE JIMMY OLSEN IS KILLING PEOPLE ONLINE AND SUPERMAN HASN'T STOPPED HIM YET REVIEW:

Let me make two things perfectly clear: I hate movies about serial killers, firmly believing both they and vampire films should be banned for at least ten years, and Diane Lane has made some truly terrible movies in her career.

However, this isn't one of them and, in fact, it's pretty good. As Green so expertly describes the plot, I will provide only a brief overview. Someone is committing murder online and these are killings that can only occur based on the amount of hits the website receives.

The film is a harsh indictment of an unfettered Internet, going a bit too far to make the point. Comparisons to other serial killer films are unfair as they are basically all the same anyway. What distinguishes this one is the hook.

Watching the horrific murders on the screen is reminiscent of the beheadings committed by Al-Queda. They're a tad too elaborate to be believable, but not as bizarre as the killings committed in "The Cell" with Jennifer Lopez.

The acting is fine. Nothing special but competent, with the exception of Smallville's Joseph Cross, a young actor with quite a future. He has a dark, edgy quality on the weekly TV show where he portrays a very different Jimmy Olsen and it serves him well in his role as Owen the tech savvy serial killer with a politically correct reason for why he's killing people.

Sadly, this a film lacking in any significant imagery. Director Gregory Hoblit shoots the film like a movie of the week featuring rock video jump cuts whenever there's something disturbing happening. His lackluster directing hampers an already flawed concept and drags the storyline in a few significant spots. A better director like David Fincher would have served this film better.

Still, "Untraceable" is undeniably watchable. I consider "Silence of the Lambs" to be one of the most overrated pieces of crap ever filmed so this movie couldn't have possibly been worse by comparison.

Compelling, for the most part, it mostly gets a decent review from me because it's a fresh idea in a moldy genre.


*** out of *****

(For the record, I never watched the Nicholas Berg beheading and I would not have watched this either.)

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Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Stop-Loss

Some time ago, the great bluez suggested that we review this movie. It's taken a while to actually get it done, but here you are hon. We aims to please, we do.

GREEN'S "I’M ALL FILLED UP AND AINT GOIN’ BACK" REVIEW:

Dedicated Army soldier Brandon King (Ryan Phillipe) has just returned from his tour of duty in Iraq to a heroes welcome from his small Texas hometown. He plans to leave the Army for good until he is surprisingly stop-lossed, meaning that he was recalled for another tour of duty shortly after the first tour ended. Problem is that King feels that he has fulfilled his duty and does not want to go back. What follows is the story of inner conflict and his attempt to run away, with help from his best friend’s fiancee’ (Abbie Cornish), first to Washington DC, then to Canada and Mexico.

This was a decent movie but not one that I was excited about watching and one that I don’t need to watch again. See, I just can’t get into this kind of movie. I suppose I’d have a different opinion if I had been in the Army and had served overseas on the front lines, came home expecting to be done and then was told I had to go back. Or if I knew someone who was. But I don’t.

No one in the cast really stood out to me as giving their best performance. I've seen Abbie Cornish now in two movies and I've not been impressed. Ryan Phillipe has been in one really good movie that I can recall since "Cruel Intentions" and this isn't it. The script is nothing that will knock your socks off but is okay.

Sorry, bluez, that’s all I’ve got for you on this one.


** out of *****

SCRIBE'S "I WANT MY F******G SH**" REVIEW:

No lie. About four hours before I watched Stop-Loss, I went to a local Laundromat in an area with its share of rednecks. A guy in a green T-shirt bearing the slogan, "Death from the North” on the back emerged from an SUV with bumper stickers on the back that said: GIVE WAR A CHANCE & BESIDES STOPPING SLAVERY, FACISM and NAZISM, WAR NEVER ACCOMPLISHED ANYTHING.

He also happened to be a Marine. I felt like I was watching his life story when I placed Stop-Loss in my DVD player.

The film follows a young sergeant in the Army (Ryan Philippe) during his tour of duty in Iraq. He and his fellow soldiers are like a close-knit family of course, and disaster looms on the horizon during a routine checkpoint procedure. As vehicles drive toward them, the U.S. soldiers stop the drivers and decide whether or not to let them through. One car comes through with guns blazing, sparking off a violent confrontation that spills over into a local neighborhood.

Beloved fellow soldiers are killed in action or mortally wounded, and it becomes obvious that he made a bad call when he decided to pursue the gunmen. That doesn’t stop the residents of his small Texas town from greeting him as a hero when he goes home to a parade that comes across as so hollow it actually feels like a bad stage play.

It isn’t until the soldiers try to interact with the people in town that we start to see just how damaged they really are. One gets so drunk he starts digging in as if he’s in Iraq even though he’s in his own front yard. He passes out in the hole with a .45 in his hand.

Phillipe’s character is ready to leave the Army and come back home. His buddy who volunteered with him and comes form the same town also seems ready to com home and marry the local ho chick. Unfortunately, when (Phillipe) reports in for his discharge, he is given orders to re-deploy to Iraq. Stunned, he is advised that he has been “stop lossed,” which is another name for a backdoor draft. Furious, he confronts his CO, whose smarmy, unconcerned response throws him into a rage. When the lieutenant colonel informs him that the President’s orders cannot be refused, Phillipe replies with an emphatic, “FUCK the president!”

Not a good idea to make such a statement to your CO and suddenly he finds himself being escorted to the brig. In a moment of spontaneous fight or flight, he disables the guards and makes a run for it.

Stop-Loss was not at all what I was expecting. Yet another movie with a poorly designed DVD cover, this looked like it was going to be a slow-paced melodrama about a guy coming home from war and pissing off his small-town neighbors by becoming an anti-war activist. Instead, Stop-Loss focuses on a man who has done his part and feels forced to go AWOL so he can spread the word about the backdoor draft, with mostly disastrous results.

The acting in this film is top notch. Had I known Phillipe was in the film, I would’ve seen it much earlier. He has always been an underrated actor with an incredible range and an often disturbing intensity. His co-stars are also good and lend authenticity to their performances by not overacting.

The battle scenes and flashbacks are handled extremely well. That fuzzy, news camera style of shooting is quickly becoming a cliché but it’s effective here. The screenplay is surprisingly good and provides plenty of moments for reflection. In fact, it is a crime that those idiots at the Academy didn’t acknowledge this film, because it is actually worthy of some Oscars.

Oh, that’s right. Nobody has a disease in this film. Perhaps if the whole movie had been about the guy who lost his arms and legs it would have won.


****1/2 out of *****

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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Snakes on a Plane

AMERICAN GUY’S “DO AS I SAY, AND YOU'LL ENJOY THIS MOVIE" GUEST REVIEW:

I’ve been trying to get Scribe and Green to review this fine film for some time now. So naturally when they finally got around to it, Green took the initiative to turn the tables on me and asked if I’d like to write a guest review myself. His one condition was that I not take the same approach I did with my review of the Wrath of Khan – where I wrote what I thought was a thorough but succinct review. Fair enough.

Having agreed to take on the challenge, the first thing I did was to ask Italian Girl if she’d like to watch it with me. I told her that there would be no confusing this with a good movie. In fact, having seen it before, I told her it was downright bad. Surprisingly, she chose not to watch it with me. I tell you all this because it’s incredibly important to have the right mindset when you watch this movie.

If you sit down and expect good acting, much of a plot or even believable action sequences, you’re setting yourself up for a big let down. But if you go in ready for Ed Wood level badness, you’ll have 105 minutes of sheer enjoyment.

I mean, come on. It’s Snakes. On a Plane. When I first heard about this film, I had the same reaction that I’m sure nearly everybody had. Best. Title. Ever. And when I heard that Samuel L Jackson was the lead… Oh man. I make no bones about believing him to be just about the finest actor that there is. That he’s incredibly hot doesn’t hurt either. Seriously. If I was straight, I’d turn for him.

I won’t give you an overview of the plot. I don’t need to. The title does that. Aside from a brief set up to give you an excuse to get (to paraphrase the catch line of the movie) the m.f. snakes on the m.f. plane, there’s not a lot to tell. The movie is filled with characters that are caricatures – from the lecherous co-pilot, to the camp male flight attendant to the Paris Hilton clone rich girl with little dog. There are even 2 kids flying unaccompanied who you know from the get-go will be just fine, even if everyone else on the plane dies. I will admit to liking the germophobe rapper and his pair of bodyguards who are fawning to his face but snarky whenever he turns away.

Just in case you forget that this is taking place on a plane, they have an extended sequence showing everyone boarding, and even take you through the entire ‘your exits are here, here and here' routine. And then of course, there are the snakes. It’s only a matter of time before they start creating havoc. Somehow, a snake knew to attack avionics (why is it always avionics? I think there’s a contractual clause somewhere that says every airplane disaster movie has to have someone say “We’ve lost avionics!”). Once the snakes learn that humans taste better than electronic equipment, they start attacking people, including such gratuitous bits as a guy being attacked in the toilets in just the manner you’d expect.

And it goes on. As I said – there was never any chance that this film was going to be tagged “Academy Award Winner…”

After I watched this film when it first came out, I figured there’d be no reason for me to see it again. But since I was challenged to do this write up, I had to download a new version. The funny thing is, it actually helped the experience that the copy I watched was a bootleg complete with people laughing and shouting at the screen. It made it even better.

Oh, and two final words: Snake cam!


***½ out of *****

SCRIBE'S "I HAVE HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHER*****IN' SNAKES ON THIS MOTHER****IN' PLANE" REVIEW:

It’s bad enough to happen upon some guy who’s being tortured while you’re on vacation in Hawaii, but when the torturer turns out to be the top Chinese Triad crime boss of LA, you just bought yourself a big heapin’ bag of trouble. Thank God for the timely, life-saving intervention of Samuel L. Jackson or that bag might have opened to reveal a big box of painful demise.

Still, Jackson’s help comes with a price tag. He’s a Federal Marshall and he badly wants you to testify against the most psychotic and dangerous crime boss since Dutch Schultz. You say ok because you’re a good guy and Jackson’s so damn cool, no real man would wish to appear bitch-boy-like before him. Besides, you’re a surfer and surfers always do the right thing. They’re cool like that.

Sadly, the crime boss has spies everywhere, so it takes him no time to find out which flight you’re talking back to LA to testify. He can’t get to you directly thanks to the two federal marshals protecting you (Jackson and his disposable partner of five years) but he has a plan: a twisted, psychotic, improbable plan that will make for some truly cringing, hysterical storytelling, visuals and acting. He’s going to release a multitude of different varieties of snakes, all pumped with pheromones, and take out the entire plane to protect his worthless ass.

And he would’ve got away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling…Jackson….and flight crew.

It sounds dumb, right? Well, it is. Really, really dumb and quite possibly one of the most enjoyable films in a decade. One of the reasons for this is the approach, which is like something out of an Irwin Allen disaster flick with tongue placed so firmly in cheek it adheres to mouth. There are enough likable and disposable characters to make this one a laugh riot in-between screams.

It’s always a good thing when the audience is in on the joke while not walking through the film like giant pieces of ham. Instead, each actor brings just the right amount of funny to their roles and the hilarious dialogue helps them immeasurably.

Reportedly, Jackson signed onto this film script unseen based solely on the title. That just made him even cooler to the cyber-geeks whose bizarre devotion to a movie they hadn’t even seen yet ensured this one’s pop culture relevance. Despite being exactly what one would hope in a movie called “Snakes on a Plane,” it couldn’t possibly live up to the ridiculous hype, so some were disappointed.

Screw em. This movie kicks ass!


***** out of *****

GREEN’S "ALL WE HAVE IS SPORKS!" REVIEW:

Because we were dumb enough to ask for suggestions, I suppose we had this coming. Why can’t people suggest good movies for us to review? Why? Why?

Knowing then, that we were going to have to review this movie at some point, I signed it out of the library and tried watching it a few months ago but had to stop because it was Just. So. Stupid.

Let me tell you that it didn’t get any better this time around. But at least I was able to watch it all the way through. That in itself is a minor miracle.

I won’t go into any plot details either, because there really are none in such a movie as this. Suffice it to say that the characters in this film fit the dead on stereotypes AG describes.

I did have some issues with the movie, not surprisingly. First, the bad guys never saw Sean’s face (Nathan Phillips, the star witness) and he reveals to Neville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson) that he didn’t talk to the media about what he saw, so how do they know what he looks like or where he lives? And if the bad guys didn’t see him, how in the heck does Neville know where he lives? Second, the ultimate solution used for getting rid of the snakes would have likely killed everyone left alive who was on the plane. Lastly, the simple solution to the snake problem is so obvious that if they used it - there would be no movie! Think about it for a sec, ok? Snakes are reptiles. Reptiles are cold blooded. So all you have to do to get them to stop attacking people, is to turn down the temperature in the cabin until they become lethargic. Then you round them up, stick ‘em in a box and BANG! You’re done. End of movie. Have a nice flight. Enjoy your stay in Los Angeles.

Yes, I get it. This is supposed to be a disaster/horror flick where people die in gruesome ways and Sam Jackson saves the day. Still, plausibility is important.

I will say that some of the snake effects were cool and the makeup used to simulate snake bites and the gruesome ways in which the passengers were killed was interesting and well done. The acting in all cases was cheesy and downright bad, even from actors as good as Sam Jackson and Julianna Margulies. The script was hardly original and definitely not a work of art. There are some films that are so bad that they’re good. This isn’t one of them.

This is a movie that I, hopefully, will never have to watch again. I even sold the used copy of this movie that I bought in order to write this review to my nephew for three 20 oz. Mountain Dew Voltage sodas (the blue Dew.) I think I got the better end of that deal.


*½ out of *****

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