Oz the Great and Powerful

Here is a list of the things I liked about Oz the Great and Powerful:

1).  Some of the (CGI) scenery.
2).  The banter between Finley (the monkey) and the china girl.
3).  Some of the tie-ins to both the original source material (e.g. Glinda is the Good Witch of the South, as she is in the books), and the 1939 movie (e.g. the Wicked Witch of the West is green and has a broom like the one in the 1939 film; some of the characters in the beginning appear as characters in Oz).

Here is a list of things I didn't like about this movie:

1).  EVERYTHING ELSE.

My biggest issue with this film was that there was SO MUCH potential for a great, interesting story about the Wizard's origin (as well as that of the wicked witches), but that was HORRIBLY and irrecoverably WASTED in favor of computer-generated bullshit.  Also, all of the acting (with the exception of Zach Braff, who spent most of the movie as the VOICE of a CGI monkey) was fucking awful.

I fully realize that there was no way this film could have ever lived up to the 1939 original, which is probably my favorite movie of all time, and has been since I was a kid. (For the record, I know that the 1939 movie is not much like the original Oz book, which I've read).

I knew from the first time I saw a preview that this movie would probably either be a stand-alone original take on the Oz universe, or maybe even based more on the original books.  I did not expect it to be like the MGM movie, but I did hope that it would at least be good.  I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up.

ARGH.  We all know that I'm a Disney lover, but holy crap, Disney, what did you do to Oz?

OH SHIT I FORGOT ABOUT THE EXPENDABLES 2!

Remember that part in the first Expendables where Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis meet in a church and proceed to create the most amazingly bad scene in the history of cinema? The Expendables 2 is that scene drawn out for 90 minutes. It's not pretty. Most of this movie is a terrible, lazy pastiche of awkward moments where old men--OSTENSIBLY ACTORS--struggle to deliver simple lines without looking right at the camera, forgetting half the words, or peeing their pants. The explosions aren't as good as in the first movie, and Terry Crews doesn't get to do enough awesome stuff. Jean-Claude Van Damme is a little piece of heaven, though, since he can actually act and seems to be making an effort. He's also still in awesome shape, so the scene where Sylvester Stallone is supposed to "win" a fight with him is very silly indeed. Oh, and Bruce Willis is acceptable.

Killer Joe

My brother and his girlfriend and I walked out of Killer Joe after literally two minutes, so I can't really review the whole movie. I can tell you the first two minutes are FUCKING TERRIBLE.

We scooted over to the next theater and watched Searching for Sugarman instead.

TO BE CONTINUED???

Prometheus

I normally hate movies with vague storylines and lots of plot holes, so you'd think I would have hated Prometheus, because it's basically a billion plot holes held together with nice visuals and good actors. I knew it was going to be trouble as soon as I saw it was written by that guy who wrote Lost. That fucking show. I hate when writers set up too many complicated storylines that you know are never going to get tied up in any kind of satisfying way, so I bailed on Lost after the first season. But even through Prometheus is totally a mess story-wise, somehow I still liked it--it really looks great, and the pacing is perfect, and the performances are good, so I was entertained the whole time and actually do recommend it. After you see it, do me a favor and watch the Red Letter Media review. It covers everything.

Movies I Don't Want to See: What to Expect When You're Expecting

We were in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago to see tiny singer-songwriter Paul Williams perform his greatest Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas-related songs, and it was great. The casino had a theater and we're too cheap to gamble, so after being all dressed up for the concert, we put on our sweatpants and went to see What to Expect When You're Expecting. Nobody wants to see this movie. It was exactly what we expected, so I can't really even get mad about it. I definitely can't spend the time it would take to list every thing that was horrible about it. And it's not like you need my warning to avoid this movie. If you saw it, you clearly also wanted to be eating movie popcorn in your sweatpants. And that's okay. Just don't let it happen again.

The Anger Games

Yes, I read the book, and yes, I liked it, and yes, I was disappointed by the movie, and yes, I'm 38 years old and The Hunger Games was clearly not made for me. I get it. But I'm still mad, because in their slavering pursuit of idiot Twilight fans, whoever made this piece of junk really missed the opportunity to make a movie that appeals to everybody. Why wouldn't you do that? Even George Lucas managed to do that.

But Lady Blogpants, you're asking, if you are not in junior high school, why did you enjoy the book, which was written for kids in junior high school? Because it had a compelling story idea and was well-written. The movie had the same compelling idea, but failed because the story fell by the wayside. And also because of bad casting (Gale and Cinna--GIRL PLEASE), exposition of only the most obvious and least-needing-of-exposition plot points, shitty CGI (seriously, the "girl on fire" scene" looked like I did it in my computer animation class at ICDC College), failure to ground the story in any kind of dystopian reality, and goddamn SHAKY CAMERAS.

The horrible handheld camera work really got in the way of telling the story, to the point where you couldn't even see what was going on. That last fight scene was basically a Renoir painting. Why would you spend however many hundreds of millions of dollars costuming extras and creating complex sets if all you're going to show is a blurry half-second flash of it?

GET OFF MY GODDAMN LAWN, THE HUNGER GAMES!

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.

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.

X-Men: First Class

I had high hopes going into this one. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender? YES PLEASE. (You may recall my weird crush on Fassbender from previous posts).

SPOILERS AHOY!


I was a little disappointed, to be honest. Sure, there's decent special effects and action (I sort of loved the sequence where Erik/Magneto goes into the South American bar and causes havok--HAHAHA no pun intended!!), though to be honest, I hated the effect for Emma Frost's "diamond" form--boo! I also didn't like that they had Mystique and Prof. X meet as children and become like...best buddies/brother and sister. What? If my googling skills are up to par, I'm pretty sure that's not at all what happens in the comics. SIGH.

Also, while they did develop a friendship between Magneto and Prof. X (which was bromance at its best), it ended really quickly--I had gotten the impression from the other films (which may or may not have anything to do with this one?? I'm unsure) that they were friends for YEARS and YEARS before having their falling out--I mean, we see them go recruit Jean Grey together as older men, right?

I guess that's where I'm the most confused--does this movie have anything to do with the previous three? I want to say yes, because they harken back to Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, they use the opening bit with Magneto pulling the fence at the ghetto/camp as a teenager, Wolverine makes an appearance--but then other things just don't match up (as mentioned above).

I hate when movies confuse me, so this one gets a B. SO THERE.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

I had high hopes for this one, especially when Lady Blogpants and I saw Jerry Bruckheimer's fancy logo before it started. "This bodes well!" she said, and I agreed. Alas, I'm of the opinion that we totally jinxed it.

Nicolas Cage was pretty much the best part of this movie. Don't get me wrong, I love Jay Baruchel (he did the voice of the main character in my favorite movie so far this year), but I felt like he was stifled and his humor under-used.

Things were too corny, too sappy; it was like watching a giant cliche. This could have been SO MUCH better. (Also, SPOILER ALERT, "The Prime Merlin-ian"?? SERIOUSLY? Who bought this script? God, Disney, get your shit together.)

The best part was when Nicolas Cage yelled the line "BECAUSE I CAN READ MINDS!" and Lady Blogpants burst out laughing. I think the people around us thought we were nuts.

Shitter Island

OK, here's my theory on Shutter Island. Leonardo DiCaprio had some Boston accent left over from his role in The Departed and didn't want to waste it, so Martin Scorsese just said "ehh, let's throw it in this crappy screenplay I just got the rights to."

Also, you know how all the film nerds (me included) hated the very last shot in The Departed? When the stupid rat runs along the stupid railing all "GET IT? THIS MOVIE WAS ABOUT A GUY BEING A RAAAAT!"? Well, Marty throws about a hundred thousand rats into a scene in Shutter Island APROPOS OF ABSOLUTELY NOTHING just to say "fuck you, film nerds. You didn't like my one rat? How about these hundred thousand rats? Huh? How you like that?" [wiggling eyebrows]

He also got his hands on a cello and a piano and did all the music himself. HOOOOOOONK! ME AND LEO CAN DO IT ALL OURSELVES! WE DON'T NEED YOU, FILM NERDS! PLINK! PLONK!

Boy, I did not enjoy this movie at all.

Leap Year

Instructions:

1) Go watch the preview for this movie.

2) Congratulations! You have now seen the entire plot (and can guess the ending), without the annoying parts, bad acting and horrible dialogue, PLUS saved some money!

You're welcome.

Lady Blogpants stole the best "New Moon Sucks" title.

This movie was a lot like the book, which is to say that it was somewhat entertaining but also completely ridiculous.

R. Patz is retarded for thinking Kristen Stewart can act. SHE CANNOT. Then again, neither can he. The only good actors in this movie were Billy Burke (Bella's dad) and Michael Sheen (creepy Aro).

Lining up to see this movie, I thought I saw quite a few Twi-hards or Twits or whatever they're called, but there was an awful lot of laughing during this film (especially during the retarded flash-forward to Bella as a vampire and Edward skipping through the forest all "tra-la-la!" coughlamecough).

Also, why must they make poor Jackson Rathbone (Jasper) look so horrid? He's a good looking kid, I swear!

I was vastly disappointed with the crappy wolf CGI, and angry that Rachelle Lefevre is not going to be in the next one. She was creepy and didn't even have any freaking lines (which is probably a blessing for her, really).

The best part of this movie-going experience for me was the first time Jacob/Taylor Lautner took off his shirt and someone in the audience gasped rather loudly--the rest of us laughed at that person (but secretly agreed).

The Mamma Mia Curse

You know how Heath Ledger got SO DEEP into his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight that it KILLED him? I heard a similar thing about Mamma Mia. I heard Meryl Streep got so deep into her role as a horrible screaming flailing person with even more horrible screaming flailing eye-bugging friends and family that she killed everybody who saw this movie. She killed me. I'm sitting here writing this as a ghost.

Indiana Jones and the Superfluous CGI Creatures of Doom

Dear George Lucas,

Fuck you and your incessant fucking need to cram your films with stupid little "cute" CGI creatures making stupid little "cute" noises. Fuck. You. What do CGI gophers and monkeys have to do with the storyline of the new Indiana Jones movie? The answer is nothing. NOTHING. NOT A THING. They serve no purpose but making me angry. I hate you, George Lucas.

As for the rest of the movie? Honestly, as long as the Indiana Jones music is playing, you could show me 2 hours of Indy having a tea party with his stuffed animals and I'd walk away more happy than not.

Of course, Lucas would probably insist that the stuffed animals be CGI and make cute little noises the whole time.

I hate you, George Lucas.

Sincerely,
Lady Blogpants of Renotowne
(a certified movie reviewer)

P.S. Aliens? Are you fucking kidding me? You had 19 years to come up with a plotline and all you could do was dust off Close Encounters and add a heavy dose of the Endor scenes from Return of the Jedi? Booooooo! Go back to Modesto!