Intro

Specializing in short, honest movie reviews.

December 22, 2011

Borrior

Warrior is about two stupid brothers who like to punch shit. One of them looks like a muscley Conan O'Brien and the other one has a weird poofy back. Both of them have gross pasty skin and are sweaty all the time. There's actually a scene where one of them has the other one in a chokehold and yells I LOVE YOU TOMMY! Ridiculous.

Fuck you, Warrior.

Hey girl, I made you a movie

I finally saw this movie last night after weeks (months?) of everyone I know saying OH you have GOT to see DRIVE. I was waiting for it to come to the New Beverly, which as you know, is the best place on earth. At this particular showing, there were a lot more people than usual who weren't New Beverly regulars, and one guy decided to try to make a loud jokey comment. He tried three times, and each time was instantly and loudly SHHHH'd by a vigilant regular, and it was simply delightful. WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE, NEW GUY.

Anyway, Drive is really good. It looks cool, sounds good, and is very well shot and edited so it has a distinctive rhythm. Okay, it's basically a 90-minute music video, but for some reason it works. I thought I might hate this movie, but I didn't.

December 21, 2011

The Guard!

Holy crap you guys, I forgot I saw The Guard! This is a very excellent movie. Brendan Gleeson is always good, but he's extry good in this one. He acts circles around Don Cheadle, which is hard for me to say because I love Don Cheadle. I guess you could call me a true Cheadliever. No? Fair enough.

The Guard: recommended!

December 8, 2011

Young Adult

Hey, did you guys know I live in Los Angeles? And get to do all kinds of good movie stuff you can't do most other places? I'm not sure if I've mentioned that before on this blog. Due to my living in this wonderland, I got to see a SUPER DUPER SECRET SNEAK PREVIEW of Young Adult a couple of months ago, with the usual star-studded Q&A afterward and everything (YAWN).

And it was really good! Really really good! Unique and dark and hilarious in parts and tragic in other parts. Patton Oswalt deserves a best supporting actor Oscar nomination (which he won't get), and Charlize Theron is much better than I would've guessed from seeing her on Arrested Development. The script is pretty great, except for one trite plot point that ends up being the movie's one flaw. I can overlook that, though, because it's a little misstep in what is otherwise SO GOOD.

Young Adult: go see it!

The Descendants

Clooney Clooneys all over the place in The Descendants, ably assisted by his trusty sidekick Hawaii. I really liked this movie.

Clooney Is Human :(

Well, Ides of March has all the components of a good movie, but is somehow not good. Gosling's character does a total 180 with no explanation or believable backstory, Evan Rachel Wood's character is likewise unbelievable (plus Wood is THE FUCKING WORST in EVERYTHING), and Clooney hardly Clooneys at all. I don't want to talk about it.

Contagion!

You thought I forgot to finish reviewing all the movies I've seen since August, but I have not! In our last episode, I was sharing my hazy memories of Our Idiot Brother. Today, I will expound on what little I remember of Contagion! I actually remember quite a bit.

So you know how in most disaster movies, shitty filmmakers create one tiny ragtag bunch of survivors and only focus on those guys? While you sit in the audience yelling I WANT TO SEE THE GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS OF THIS EVENT AND HONESTLY COULD NOT CARE LESS ABOUT THIS REDEMPTIVE SCHLUB, SEXY SCIENTIST LADY, ONE TO TWO INNOCENT ADORABLE CHILDREN, AND EITHER A BLACK OR NERD WHO WILL DIE FIRST? Well, for once a movie doesn't do that, thanks to good old Steven Soderbergh. There are a handful of main characters, yes, but the movie jumps back and forth between them and shows a lot of nameless people dying of the ick as well.

Couple of things: casting Dmitri Martin as an epidemiologist was a bad call--very distracting--and Laurence Fishburne is a terrible, terrible actor. He's Morpheus in everything*, including this movie, which means he talks really slowly and is an idiot. Aside from those things, though, I recommend Contagion!



*The lone exception, of course, is his seminal role as Cowboy Curtis on Pee-Wee's Playhouse.

December 3, 2011

Breaking Dawn

I secretly really wanted to see this, if only to see how awful it was. It did not disappoint. Things dragged on, dialogue was clunky, Kristen Stewart only changed her facial expression twice. Also, I don't know how she and Rob Pattinson can be a real-life couple, because they have absolutely no chemistry on-screen.

The birth scene was just as awesome and awful and everything else you could possibly imagine--all I could do was sit there and laugh--there are just no words.

High points: Jackson Rathbone only had to attempt his southern accent twice, the wolves are all still awesome, and they used some kind of awesome movie magic to make Bella/Kristen look really, really scary skinny, so that was kind of impressive. I can't bring myself to hate this entirely, maybe because it really amuses me. Heh.