That's Incredible

I wish that after my long absence posting reviews that I could tell you they made a That's Incredible movie and that Cathy Lee Crosby was the best thing in it, but instead you'll have to settle for a few thoughts on the Incredible Hulk.

Like many of you unfortunate enough to have seen the 2003 Ang Lee Hulk picture, my hopes for this sequel re imagining were not very high. Sure, this time we get Ed Norton and Liv Tyler, but I don't hate Eric Bana and I'll take Jennifer Connelly over Tyler any day of the week.

The question then is, does this Hulk deliver? Kind of. A little bit. Maybe. As I write these reviews I am reminded more and more just how cynical I am with regard to the movies I see these days. Perhaps it is that I'm getting older, but I rarely seem to feel the excitement for films that I did working at Blockbuster in the late '90s when I was in film school. The Incredible Hulk is a prime example of the kind of movie that I feel absolutely ho-hum about now, but wonder if I would have enjoyed more ten years ago.

Or perhaps The Incredible Hulk (and it's ilk) just isn't really that great. Too many meetings with marketing, too many producers wanting to be creative (and by creative I mean pander to the lowest common audience denominator so as to ensure that no one is offended) and ultimately a lackluster effort.

The Hulk has never been my favorite Marvel character, though I do profess a soft-spot for the grey-skinned hulk of the late '80s comics. Somehow the phrase "Hulk Smash!" never really did anything for me and the Hulk on display here both typifies the aspects of the character I find most boring and actually says the phrase.

In terms of the story, the Hulk himself is almost a non-character here, with the real story being about Bruce Banner trying to cure himself of his inner, green demon. If you've seen the Ang Lee version, the story is pretty much the same. Banner is on the run and the military is after him. They find him, he gets angry, smashes a bunch of stuff, repeat. Oh, there's a showdown with another "Hulk creature" (no Hulk dogs though) too. No sign of the She-Hulk though. Too bad.

Apparently there are plans to make a Thor movie, a Captain America movie and then an Avengers movie, with those two, Iron Man, Spiderman and the Hulk rounding out the cast of heroes. Given the Hulk character we've seen in the movies so far, I'm not sure how that's going to work - the Hulk, like my one year olds, doesn't know how to use his words yet.

Ultimately this movie left no real impression on me either way beyond almost total indifference. As a whole I neither liked it nor hated it, but felt both ways as it moved along.

Pain score: 4 of 10.

We had Michelina Snack rolls (both chicken and apple flavors) and Cakesters as snacks. Truly a delight.

The Incredible Hulk

I miss Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't necessarily miss the man but I miss the attitude. In his world there were good guys and there were bad guys and you killed the bad guys mercilessly and you protected the good guys and you didn't ask questions. The new crop of super heroes these days are all so emo. They side with the bad guys and feel bad about hurting them so it was no surprise when during the climactic battle between the Hulk and some other mutant Hulk, the green Hulk makes a sour emo-singer face and decides to spare the mutant Hulks life, even though the mutant hulk has killed a ton of people and has been trying to kill the Hulk for the whole movie. Look I'm not arguing that in real life we must have understanding and compassion for even the worst monsters of society, but that's real life, in the movies I want catharsis and for me that's seeing bad guys get shot in the face. The people agree; Iron Man was a huge hit, is it necessarily a better movie than The Incredible Hulk. They both pretty much follow the same superhero movie formula, they have big action set pieces, lots of CGI explosions, and skinny starlets but one tanked and one succeeded. The difference is attitude. The Hulk hates being the Hulk and spends the whole movie, the whole movie right up to the end brooding and whining about it. Iron Man is Iron man and he loves it so we love it too. And so what he blows up some terrorists that probably were lead into terrorism because the oppressive policies of the western world reduced their countries into impoverished third world states leaving them no choice but to be a terrorist blah blah save it for the UN. I don't want to think about that I want to see the hero smile while he blows their heads off and not cry and whine about it. I want Tyler Durden, instead I got the other guy.

Gripes

Is green hard to render in a computer? Because since the first Hulk movie flopped so long ago the hulk CGI still looks fake. The stuff getting smashed looked good but hulk and abominable hulk looked fake.
Stan Lee, Lou Ferrina, some other guy all made Hulk cameos. Annoying and pulled me out of the movie but I guess if you're a big fan of the comics you'd get a kick out of it.
At the end of the film Robert Downey Jr. makes an appearance as Tony Stark to set up some kind of sequel. It just encourages the comparison between the failure and non failure and is all gross in that "marketing up your ass" sort of way.
Liv Tyler is completely useless in this movie, her role could have been played by a blow up doll because all she does during the film is make the O face. It's not her fault it's the writing.
What's the conflict here? Jack doesn't want to be the Hulk, he's looking for the cure, crazed general and crazy soldier guy are looking for him, they fight a couple of times, Jack gets the cure, crazy soldier turns into crazy hulk, cure is ignored and jack hulks out, he beats up crazy hulk but doesn't kill him, end, nothing is really resolved and I feel cheated because the whole movie is set up for some distant sequel.

What Worked

Edward Norton while maybe not the most obvious choice for an action star is a great actor and compelling to watch. Sadly he's not given much to do here. He broods and broods some more. The scenes of him in Brazil hiding out and interacting with the locals were somehow the most compelling and interesting and made me care about the character. But then everything turned to turd.

Worse Than Dungeons and Dragons?

No. At no point does anyone yell unenthusiastically "now is your time to die"

Mediocrity Scale

Mediocre

Food

We had some kind of excellent snack size pastry filled with apple or buffalo chicken. It was reduced for quick sale at the store but was quite excellent. Oreo Cakesters to fill out the sugar quotient and Coke Zero to wash it all down.

Rush Hour 3

This is easily one of the worst movies we've had the un-pleasure of watching. As you may or may not have noticed in my reviews I compare each movie to Dungeons and Dragons, the worst movie we have ever watched in our little weekly get together. DD was not enjoyable on any level, intentional or unintentional. There are lots of bad movies but often they're so bad that it's actually interesting or enjoyable to watch them, kind of like a car crash or snuff film, but DD was not pleasant in any way, it was just minutes and minutes of failure you aren't interested in seeing. The second worst movie we have ever seen was Stuck on You, horrible but not horrible enough to dethrone DD. Is Rush Hour 3 bad enough to take the top spot?

The original Rush Hour concept was simple; mix 1 part Chris Tucker comedy, with 1 part Jackie Chan high wire action and you've got a killer buddy-action-comedy flick. So what went wrong here?

Gripes:

1st the comedy; it's old, its tired, it ain't there. There are basically three gags in the whole movie and they are recycled ad nauseum. Gag #1 Chris Tucker Yells and Yells and Yells. I don't know what happened to Chris Tucker but the novelty of his yelling has worn off. I believe it wore off somewhere near the end of Rush Hour 1. Gag #2 Chris Tucker Sings Sooooouuuuuul Music and Dances All Kooky. The movie opens with this and it's not funny from the get go. He just looked bored here, like he wanted to leave and had something better to do. He probably did - heck going to take a dump would have been better than this. The guy needs new shtick bad. Note; apparently he got paid 20million for this movie so really he gets the last laugh on us. Gag #3 Jackie Chan talks in Ebonics. Not since Cousin Balky has mangling the english language been used to such ineffective comic effect. Basically this just isn't a funny movie, it's not even funny for not being funny. If you want comedy look elsewhere.

2nd the action: Jackie Chan ain't as spry as he used to be. He's getting old and he can't do all the stunts that he could before. Really he's geriatric at this point and I think the biggest stunt he managed here was jumping and hiding in a big flag. Other wise he just kicks people and jumps over small coffee tables. Not very good. Worse; I guess Tucker got tired of playing the incompetent that messes everything up and he wanted to do some kung fu too. There's even some ridiculous expository dialogue (that Tucker yells at top volume) that explains this. It's stupid and it fucks up the formula; Tucker mucks up in a humourous way, Chan saves him in creative action packed way. Instead they just clumsily hit stuff and chan jumps over a very small table. Whopee. I guess that's the biggest problem here, this movie feels old and tired like it's really been done before, but at the same time it tinkers enough with the tried and true formula to not even give you the pay off seeing something you're used to working. In the end we just tuned out of the movie and let it play out to it's predictable boring conclusion.

What Worked

Say what you will about Brett Ratner he can direct some good action sequences, or maybe that was his second unit. But there are good moments in a car chase scene. That's about it.

So Is it Worse than Dungeons and Dragons?

No. It's not even worse than Stuck on You. Don't get me wrong this is horrible, the worst most uninteresting thing we've seen in weeks. A movie that seeks out your hate gland and tickles it in full force but it has one thing going for it: Money. This movie had a big budget and you can see the dollars on the screen. From the car chases to the predictable scenes of our heroes hanging (and yelling constantly yelling) from the Eifle Tower it all looks so good and that was the most enjoyable thing. DD had nothing like that, it looked like it was made for a hundred bucks even though probably it cost millions, so therefore Rush Hour 3 was better.

Mediocrity Scale

Not Even Mediocre.

Food

We shirked the store bought processed food for delicious home made chocolate cake. Nuff said.

Street Kings? Kings of the Street?

Shit I just watched it last night and I've already forgotten the title. Anyways Forrest Whittaker and Keanu Reeves are crooked cops in L.A. But then Keanu is crooked to do good and it turns out that Whittaker is just crooked and so is all of Keanu's unit. Also Johnny Flame or whatever is there too and he gets killed. And that doctor guy Bones? Mothers? whatever he walks with a limp and is really raspy he's there too and he appears every once in a while to be all raspy and shit. I'm telling you all of this but you already know this from the first frame of film because it's all really predictable and by the numbers and the big twist isn't really any kind of twist plus there's another twist that is so ridiculous that it's best left ignored. Still I liked it. There's people shooting at each other and murder and it's all rated R and it's kind of fun. I also liked Keanu as this older experienced kind of killer cop guy. I beleived it especially next to the Flalme On guy, I really saw the experienced successful sci-fi franchise veteran next to the new up and commer.

Gripes: Two Words: Forrest Whittaker. I just don't see what people like about this guy, I can't stand him. I don't know why but he just rubs me in a bad way. He always looks like he's about to cry or something. I just want to pinch his cheeks and tickle his belly and say "it's alright don't cry".

What Worked: A guy gets shot throught the back of the head and the front of his face gets blown off, another guy gets machined gunned repeatedly by two guys until he's just kind of jello. I love that kind of stuff, it takes me back to my fondest childhood memories of sneaking into Rated R movies at the local ciniplex.

Worse Thank Dungeons and Dragons? No. It did not incite any hate or desire to track down the movie makers, chain them to a wall, whip their backs, then pour lemon juice on the wounds like DD did.

Mediocrity Scale: A bit above Mediocre Violence.

Food: We started with a litre each of Sinful Cookie or something Ice Cream. Sweet, pretty creamy cheap Safeway Ice Cream that gave me bad farts and weird poo due to my mild lactose intolerance. Next we followed it up with some Pringles Restaurant Special Chips in Hamburger flavour. Yes that's right Hamburger. There were pictures of Hamburgers on the box to signify that it was indeed Hamburger flavour. Unfortunately it just tasted like a combo of ketchup, cheese, and smoke flavour and was quite disappointing. We didn't even finish it. To drink the always venerable Coke Zero.

10,000 BC

We avoided renting this one for a long time. There it sat on the shelf at the video store, mocking us - daring us to rent it. Week after week we ignored it, pointing at it jokingly, asking ourselves when we would be desperate enough to rent this movie called "10,000 BC".

Well, we finally succumbed, as I knew we eventually would. If you haven't seen the movie and are wondering what it was like, the best description I could give you would be to imagine crossing Clan of the Cave Bear with Ice Age, with maybe a little Conan the Barbarian and 300 thrown in.

The story starts with the tale of a young hunter who has a crush on the most beautiful girl in his tribe - a girl with some sort of prophecy associated with her. The young man is not altogether that popular with his fellow tribe-mates after his father, the lead hunter of the tribe, abandons them when his son is a small boy. Since this boy is the lead, you know he's going to prove himself on his first hunt, proving his worth against a mammoth that looked about as realistic as an animal from the aforementioned Ice Age.

Having proven himself to the "haters" within the first 20 minutes of the film, the film gets going when the beautiful girl is kidnapped by a proto-islamic Thulsa Doom thug leading our hero and a few of his tribemates on a cross counry search worthy of Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas. Gathering the support of the united nations along the way, our hero finally finds himself in Egypt where he leads a slave rebellion against the King and some more bad CGI animals.

It's been awhile since we've seen a movie this bad. How hard would it have been to make the film a little bit more Dragonslayer or Beastmaster and a little bit less Apocalypto? This film didn't even throw us a bone like Apocalypto did with the Jaguar scene.

Pain score: 7.5 out of 10.

Fittingly, the snacks were bad as well. We had some kind of baked cracker snacks called Crispers. It was a real disgrace to eat something so healthy and we couldn't even finish a single bag of the cardboard "chips".

10,000 b.c.

A bunch of tribesmen who speak in really short serious sentences (akin to Lothar of the Hill People) track down a bunch of pre-Muslim Muslims who stole some of their friends and a very special girl with blue eyes. Their journey leads them to befriend many noble humorously dressed African tribesmen and they and digital Mamoths, Sabertooths and Ostritches overthrow the evil pre-Egyptian Egyptian emperor and free all the slaves. Yay. This is a movie for everyone. So it sucks. It takes it self very seriously but is totally and completely ridiculous. At about the 45minute mark my brain completely shut down and I was actually able to enjoy the rest of the movie, so I recommend lowering you mental activity to basic brain stem function before starting the film and you'll have a great time.

Gripes: Bad CGI. Stilted terrible expository dialogue about lots of plot lines and ideas about long lost fathers, ancient tribes, old mothers, spirtis, and all of them go absolutely nowhere. PG rating takes all credibility away (that blue eyed girl would have been raped ten times before she even made it a mile) Terrible CGI. Racism? Maybe that's too harsh, how about extreme stereo types.

What worked: Any time the movie forgot that it had to be a big summer block buster with CGI and lots of plot and just settled into telling the story of a bunch of guys going to save a bunch of other guys I could actually pay attention and get interested.

Worse than Dungeons and Dragons?: No. But at the start I thought it might be close however it never reached the heights of pure outrage and hatred that DD did.

Mediocrity Scale: Pretty Mediocre

Food: Cream Soda Crush which was just syrupy and sweet. We also ate Crispers Ranch flavour, and Sour Cream and Onion flavor. If I had to break down the experience of eating them to its most basic I would have to say thin cardboard strips coated with salt. We did not finish either pack. Normally we fight to the end to finish whatever we have.

The Bank Job

Jason Statham is awesome. One of my favorite action film actors working today.

The Bank job is the story of a group of small time crooks who, under the pretense of being presented with a score too big and easy to pass up, are actually being manipulated to steal the contents of a security deposit box containing some X-Rated photographs of a royal personnage.

There is a subplot involving the UK version of Malcolm X who supposedly is using the photos to blackmail the british government in such a way that the powers that be feel that hiring some crooks to steal the photos is a better plan than to send in some secret agents to do the job.

But like any good Hitchockian thriller, the whys and wherefores are less important than the journey and the predicament our hero finds himself in.

The movie which takes place in the '70s feels quite a bit like a Guy Ritchie movie, or a low-rent version of Ocean's 11 (the remake (which is fabulous), not the original (which sucks)). The actors all acquit themselves well and the script keeps the action moving along with the requisite suspense and "will they get caught" moments.

Of course like any movie we sit down to watch together, The Bank Job is not without it's share of problems, most notably a few slow periods where the film drags a bit between the good parts. Overall I don't have a lot to complain about, but I'm happy I didn't pay full movie theatre fare.

Pain Score: 3 out of 10.

Redacted

Once again I am behind in my review posting, so please forgive me if my memory of the movie is cloudy.

Over the last couple of months I've slowly been making my way through the "Iraq war" movie glut of last year having seen In The Valley of Elah, The Kingdom, Lions for Lambs and now finally Redacted.

I was curious to know why Redacted lives on the "Restricted" shelf of the local video store, beside the soft core porn films and was disappointed that the rating was earned for a particularly gruesome rape sequence rather than for violent or profane content. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The movie, which stars no one, is directed by Brian DePalma and pretends to be assembled from video footage collected by several groups - an army grunt, a french news channel, and some security video footage.

If this sounds a lot like the recently reviewed here Vantage Point, it's because it is, though this time we are at least spared having to see the same sequence over and over again.

The story revolves around a group of army grunts whose tour has just been extended as they deal with the high stress environment of operating an army checkpoint. Looking to burn off some steam after an incident involving the shooting of a pregnant woman during a "routine" checkpoint stop, a couple of the boys decide to go and have some "fun" - raping a young Iraqi woman and killing her family while two of their comrades look on in horror - unable to do anything to stop them.

Unfortunately the movie is far more interested in scoring points against war in general and the "war on terror" in particular to delve into the true motivations and emotions of the characters involved. The villains are cookie-cutter and the speech given by the "hero" who presented evidence against his former friends at the end of the movie is forced and contrived.

Pain scale: 6 out of 10.

Pointless

Raph insisted on seeing the Dennis Quaid/Forrest Whittaker epic Vantage Point this time out and I have to admit that I was somewhat curious. Was this going to be a movie that would rise above it's gimic (viewing the same story from the "vantage point" of several different characters (get it?)) or was the gimic all the movie had going for it?

The answer was clear within the first five minutes. Vantage Point is a thriller decidely lacking in thrills. Instead of using the fact that the audience knows what is going to happen (from both the trailer of the film and the opening sequence) to build suspense, the filmmakers thought it would be more interesting to use each character's vantage point to hammer us over the head with the details any reasonable person would have noticed previously.

The conceit completely falls apart in the last third or so of the movie when the film begins cutting between multiple vantage points to tell the meat of the story. The climax, which brings everyone together was laughably implausible, like an M. Night Shyamalan movie without a twist ending.

Pain score: 6 out of 10.

We had "cheese" to eat, but we made the mistake of buying Roasted Red Pepper and Lime flavored tortilla chips which were awful. We had Ice Blue Kool-Aid instead of our usual carbonated beverage selection which was a refreshing change and surprisingly delicious. It was surprised that it wasn't sweeter tasting than it was given the cup of sugar required to make it.

Vantage Point

J has already said pretty much what there is to say. This movie is a stinker. Still, here's my 2 cents.

Dennis Quaid, Sigourney Weaver, Forrest Whitaker, and a bunch of terrorist looking actors come to cash their checks. This movie is really bad and has so many things wrong with it it's hard to figure out where to begin. Let's do a quick recap; The US president (Jimmie's borther from History of Violence but giving a much more boring and sedate performance) is in Spain to give a speech, a terrorist threat is intercepted, so instead of the real president giving the speech it's his double. Guarding the double is Dennis Quaid, an experienced secret service agent who last year got shot protecting the pres but is now back on the job and is understandably nervous. The double gets shot, the real pres gets kidnapped and the whole thing is foiled by an annoying little girl that likes to play in traffic. Now the kicker is we get to see these events unfold from seven different points of view, seven 'vantage points' if you will. We see it from the POV of the terrorists, innocent bystander I look like I'm going to cry all the time Forrest Whitaker, Dennis Quaid, the president guy, Sigourney Weaver in a Television control room, some random Spanish cop, and so on. Which kind of sounds cool, but it's not cool, not cool at all, it's just lame. To begin with if you remove the different points of view concept and just lay out the plot of the thing it's totally ridiculous and unbeleviable. Double agents, super duper prescient terrorists, super duper secret ops trained terrorists, Dennis Quaid is always at the exact right place at the right time, it's dumb and cliche at every turn. But it gets worse, you have to watch the dumb cliches over and over. Each point of view reveals a bit more of the story but after it's played out the movie rewinds and you have to sit through stuff you already saw again. Because Dennis Quaid is the focus (star? is Dennis Quaid a star?) of the film each 'vantage point' has to feature him, so unfortunately we get to see him make the same phone call more than once. Why? That's boring. Stupidly he's one of the first vantage points presented, so we basically know the whole story from the central characters POV right from the beginning. I could care less what the periphery characters saw, just get on with it. It's like watching Star Wars up to the moment in the cantina scene where pig face gets his arm chopped off, then the movie rewinds and we watch pigfaced man's day until he gets to the cantina and we watch him again interact with the leads and gets his arm chopped off again. Who cares; get on with Star Wars.

What Worked:

There's people getting shot and explosions and that's always neat. There's a car chase and cars get smashed up pretty good.

Gipes :

This thing is such a fiasco it's hard to list them all. The boring sequence right from the top in the televesion control room (one of the 'vantage points') which features a tired and confused Sigourney Weaver.

How about the fact that there's a huge bomb explosion in a public place but no one seems to really get hurt. It's so sanitary it's offensive to every person that has lost a limb or had their face blown off by a bomb.

Forest Whittaker, all of Forest Whittaker, every single frame of Forest Whittaker.

Was it better than Dungeons and Dragons?

Yes. There is no part in DD worth watching, in this at least the car chase scene is something and I must admit I wanted to see how the thing was going to end and play out (I was sorely disappointed with how it did mind you) I couldn't care less how DD was going to end.

Mediocroty Scale:

A less than mediocre effort all around

Food.

We had some kind of blue Kool-Aid and thankfully it didn't kill us and tasted great and refreshing. Some kind of lime tortilla chips; look that lime powder shit doesn't belong on anything so stop putting it on stuff it makes it taste gross. And of course melted Nacho Cheese is an old favorite and it was good minus the lime flavour.

Resident Evil: Extinction

As we started watching the latest entry in the Resident Evil franchise, I realized that despite having seen the previous films, I had virtually no memory of them.

It is appropriate then, that a little over a week after watching, I have little memory of the latest entry. Milla Jovovich is once again pitted against the remnants of the evil corporation that genetically engineered her (or did they only clone her?) and in the process she runs into the kids from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, who, now grown up are travelling across America in a convoy, searching out gas and food from each broken town.

In the meantime there are a few battles with zombie crows and zombie humans, and Ashanti dies (the film isn't all bad) until the final confrontation with the corporations lead scientist who decides to try his latest experiment out on himself, turning himself into a super zombie.

Neither Milla nor we the audience ever make it to Tomorrow-morrow land, but things are set up nicely for another sequel that I'm sure I'll see but not remember.

Overall pain score: 5 out of 10.

Resident Evil: Extinction

It's Mila Jojovich and a bunch of pretty kids running around the desert fighting zombies. Thankfully a lot of the pretty kids get eaten by the zombies.

After some virus has turned most of the population of the world into mindless zombies bent on killing people and turned the earth into a barren wasteland a few pockets of humanity survive. One of these pockets is a convoy of people that drive around in big SUV's (H2's no less) collecting gas and survivors. The poeple are mostly made up of young Lindsay Lohan wanna be girls. Actually seeing them driving around in an H2 is quite appropriate since it's probably what they do on a daily basis in their regular lives, but they simply were not an ounce beleivable as rough and tough survivors of an apokalypse. I think Alyiah was one of them but what do I know. Anyway they hook up with Mila and kick zombie ass, except that a lot of those starlets get eaten on the way. Which is fun. Actually having these girls in the film made Mila Jojovich seem that much more credible. She had a real sense of having done it all before sadness about her I really liked.

There was lots of convoluded plot about super domesticated zombies, Mila having special powers, unafected areas in Canada, on and on as is usually the case in these video game movies. Since I haven't played the game and didn't care I didn't really pay attention to the plot. I just sat back and enjoyed Mila killing zombies with knives and machetes, zombies getting machine gunned, and young startlets getting eaten.

What worked:

It's rated R and the violence was there. I like zombies that eat people so that was fun. The action set pieces were on the low budget side, but this is a low budget zombie thing so.

Gripes:

The acting was really bad. I could see the acting coaches lurking in the shadows. These kids just don't have talent and shouldn't act. The killer birds sequence was stupid too but it did thankfully kill Alyiah.

Was it Better than Dungeons and Dragons:
Oh yeah. R rating alone makes it better, throw in zombies and some bloody kills and you're in a different league from D&D.

Mediocrity Scale:

Pretty Mediocre.

Food:

I think we had albino Oreo Cakesters. They're discounted at the supermarket and rightfully so. It's kind of like a twinky burger type thing. I could feel the sugar grains in the filling; not high quality stuff. We also had another flavour of Fanta, I think it was grape, I just remember it was gross.

Fantastic!

The key thing to understand about our decision to watch Fantastic Four 2 - The Rise of the Silver Surfer is that it was entirely motivated by my desire to try out the iTunes movie rental service. For those of you not familiar with the service, it works by allowing you to download a movie through the iTunes store and watch it at your leisure (as long as your leisure starts within 30 days of your downloading the film and you have the time to watch the film within 48 hours of starting it).

There aren't a whole lot of rental choices on the iTunes store, or rather not many that fall within our typical movie watching parameters, so we ended up with Fantastic Four 2 despite having seen the original and having full knowledge of what we were likely getting ourselves into.

As expected there is not a lot to like about this pointless sequel. I find it difficult to understand how so many (probably) smart people can feel happy or even satisfied by uninspired, cartoonish effects. When I think about the sheer number of meetings, discussions, whiteboard brainstorming and man hours that go into creating elaborate effects sequences that can't stand up to work being done 30 years ago I have to shake my head and wonder who is asleep at the wheel.

Without good effects work to fall back on, Fantastic Four 2 doesn't even have the one thing going for it that one might have hoped for - exciting action sequences. Jessica Alba is terrible in the movie and the rest of the cast isn't much better. Maybe it's not really the actors that are so bad - maybe it's the writing, or maybe it's the directing or maybe it's all three. It's hard to say for sure, so maybe best to consider each aspect of the film as a complete failure on it's own.

The story starts with a lame setup about Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl getting married (she wants a normal life and for the two of them to focus on their personal life while he is distracted by work and fighting evil). When an alien force which threatens the entire planet (as well as the "Fantastic Wedding" and any further attempt at character development) arrives in the form of the Silver Surfer the team is forced to save the world once again.

In addition to saving the planet from the silver menace, the team is faced with some teamwork issues, an uncooperative military commander and Dr. Doom who only seems to be in the film so that they can fight him for about 5 minutes after he predictably betrays them.

Pain score: 6 of 10. I really disliked this movie.

We had Michelina Buffalo-style chicken snacks and EXTREME Screamin' Dill Pringles chips to eat and both were somewhat enjoyable. The chicken snacks in particular were far better than I expected.

Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer

I think it's actually been two weeks since I saw this film and I've been avoiding writing about it. Maybe I've been too busy, maybe I haven't felt like writing or maybe I'm a little embarrassed because I actually liked this movie. Maybe all of the above.

This is a dead simple movie that seeks only to entertain. There's really not too much to say. The acting is wooden the effects are pretty good the story is decent and a good time is had by all. You just have to know going in this is by the numbers entertainment, not much more. It's what I would call a good mediocre movie.

Gripes:

I'm really struggling to find something to gripe about. There's a lot that's half assed, and badly executed but the movie definitely is greater than the sum of it's parts, so therefore everything kinda works. It's also been two weeks since I saw this and it's fading away...

What works:


I'm not a comic book fan so I don't know the story of the silver surfer. I didn't know anything about the planet eating or his surfboard or any of it so it was fun to figure out the mystery.
The movie has a good pace. The time between set pieces is brief and seems to serve the overall story so I wasn't really ever bored.
Most importantly the movie seems totally unpretentious about itself. It knows we're watching a pulp movie and it's having fun and so am I.

Was it Better than Dungeons and Dragons:

Yes it was. Better pace, doesn't take itself too seriously, no shitty dragons, doesn't take away the will to live.

Mediocrity Scale:

It's mediocre, but good mediocre.

Food Review:

We ate some kind of chicken balls or something coated in pastry. It tasted exactly like what I would imagine chicken tastes like after going through the teleportation device in David Cronenbergs the Fly before all the bugs are worked out. (pun not intended)

We also ate Pringles EXTREME FLAVOUR DILL PICKLE CHIPS!!. If by extreme they mean really really salty, then they were extreme indeed. Also the picture of the pickles on the box looks like green turds. Not good.

Mr. Brooks

I was disappointed to learn that this movie did not continue the adventures of Brooks from the Shawshank Redemption, in prequel fashion. I wanted to experience him seeing that car once, when he was a kid.

But I digress.

Mr. Brooks is a successful business man - he makes boxes. And he's a schizophrenic sociopath too. So there's that. But he's trying to do the right thing Ringo, despite the constant whining from his hallucinary friend who is constantly goading him to treat himself to another murder - he's been such a good boy after all.

Why are serial killers in movies always either successful business men or shady drifters? I want to see a middle manager snap and go and a killing spree. That would be a great movie.

Eventually Mr. Brooks' imaginary friend gets the upper hand and they're at it again, killing a couple who like having sex in front of a wide open window. We're treated to an extended sequence showing how careful Mr. Brooks is to make sure he doesn't get caught. Everything is all planned out so that no one will be the wiser. Except for the window thing. How did he overlook that?

You can probably guess what happens next. Despite Mr. Brooks' special care he is photographed by Dane Cook who proceeds to blackmail him. The "twist" is that Dane Cook isn't after money, he wants Mr. Brooks to mentor him in the art of murder. Where do they come up with these original ideas?

Meanwhile the cops are on the case, looking for clues into this new murder by the serial killer who hasn't struck in two years. The main cop is played by Demi Moore who doesn't bring much to the part. Worse, it appears that in order to land such a major star, the studio had to agree to add a lot more "story" for her character to make her part bigger.

Suddenly the movie changes course and we have to sit through learning about Demi's backstory (she's being divorced by her boy-toy ex. who wants a piece of her huge fortune). The new movie within a movie drags on long enough that for you to lose interest in the Mr. Brooks storyline before finally getting back to business.

Except now the story has changed again and Mr. Brooks is dealing with his daughter who shows up home from college, saying she has dropped out. To make matters worse the cops show up shortly after asking questions about the murder of her boyfriend.

This just isn't Mr. Brooks' week. Nor mine. I've got a sociopath, a rich cop and the story of a young woman trying to follow in her father's footsteps with limited success. Too bad I don't have a tight plot, suspense or action. And three endings. Why not four? I'm holding out for the scooby-doo ending.

Pain scale score: 4 out of 10

Snack time was Raph's choice and he picked chicken pot pies which were pretty standard as such things go. The Fanta Grape was surprisingly tasty, considering our recent experience with the abysmal Red Tangerine flavor. After such an ordinary snack outing we'll have to be sure to find something truly disturbing for next time.

Mr. Brooks

Okay, let me try to get all this straight: There's Mr. Brooks (Dances with Wolves guy), who kills people because he's addicted and is also a successful business man with a wife and family and is trying to quit, there's his imaginary friend (William Hurt?) who goads him into killing people and acts like a guardian angel of sorts for serial killers, there's Dane Cook, the guy that catches Mr. Brooks killing a couple that likes to dance and screw with the blinds open, and blackmails Mr. Brooks with photos of him killing set couple into teaching him how to be a serial killer, there's Demi Moore playing the hard nosed tough woman cop who's going through a tough divorce and is a millionaire because she inherited a lot of money from her dad who wanted a boy so to prove to him she's good enough she works as a cop even though she doesn't have to and is trying to solve Mr. Brooks' murders, there's her partner (token black guy), there's Mr. Brook's daughter (some young starlet) who's back from college because she killed somebody with a hatchet and is preggos, there's Mr. Brooks' wife (the old former stripper lady in CSI Las Vegas) who doesn't know anything, and there's Demi Moore's ex-husband and his lawyer lady who have a sexy affair.

Whew. That's a lot of characters and a lot of plot. Mr. Brooks' feels bookish and I bet if I looked it up I would find that it was based on a novel. You have to pay attention to Mr. Brooks because it jams in a lot in it's fairly lengthy running time and that is a problem because it's kind of slow. However I enjoyed it. The writing is good, Dances With Wolves guy is understated as always but compelling, William Hurt is fun, and even Dane Cook doesn't annoy too much, plus *SPOILER* he gets killed in a neat gory fashion. What I liked most is it's an unusual serial killer movie; a killer who wants to quit has all these problems getting out and the problems pile on and he has to get out of it in a creative serial killer fashion, it's kind of fun and it's kind of smart too. You also see a lot of the twists coming but it's handled well and you don't really know. Plus that's part of the fun.

Gripes:

Too much Demi. Demi Moore is fine, she looks good (surgically), there's nothing wrong with her acting, but her character isn't a big enough player in the story to warrant so much development. The movie could have been a lot shorter if they chose to keep a lot of her background on the down low. It felt a bit like they put all that in because of who Demi Moore is and she probably demanded it.

False ending: The movie ends three times, the first twist is good, the second; not so much. It feels like a last minute addition and the Mr. Brooks character is totally inconsistent in the final ending with everything he'd done up until then. Probably some kind of studio bandoogle.

What Worked:

A lot like I said before. The writing is what really works for me here. There's a lot here and it didn't feel like I was being fed a lot of exposition which is always good. My feeling could be a matter of reference though as the movie I watched prior to this was the crap storm that is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: a study in poor exposition thick writing so maybe by comparison Mr. Brooks had less clunky exposition. I don't know. Don't see Indiana Jones is all I can say about that.

Is it better than Dungeons and Dragons:

Yes, a lot better. Real actors, no bad CGI, no Shakespeareans picking up pay cheque.

Mediocrity scale:

Above Mediocre

Food Review:

We had Meat Shoppe brand chicken pot pies. They tasted kind of good going down but later in the night I couldn't sleep because of stomach pains and nausea. Stay away. Oh and we had Purple Fanta; gross, tastes like some kind of mixture of medicine and cleaning chemicals.

The Golden Compass (Aborted Franchise)

A big problem with this movie is that for source material that clearly required a great deal of imagination to create, the movie makers were totally devoid of any. This is a movie by numbers. The casting is uninspired (Come on Gandalf? You couldn't find any other Shakespearean actor?) as is the whole movie. The worst culprit is the writing here; all exposition. As a result the lead girl isn't given much to do except to react to tons and tons of expository dialogue and green screen effects, so we end up not liking her. Smart creative writers are able to hide the exposition in action and story. Here they just say it. This is this and this is this and this is called this and this is the most magical important thing blah blah blah blah. They might as well have done the movie as a Power Point presentation, it would have been equally as enjoyable and I would have been involved about as much. It's like they were so worried about setting up the two sequels that they forgot to make an entertaining movie. Sucks to be them because this movie pretty much bombed so the sequels have been cancelled.

My other gripes:

I couldn't hear what Nicole Kidman was saying. She kept talking in this low scratchy voice that was hard to make out. It wasn't sexy at all. So did the James Bond girl whatever her name is. Is this some kind of new trend; Frog throat acting? It needs to end.

After LOTR and the movie about Spartans, your climactic epic battle between good and evil better be good. It wasn't here, move on.

What Worked:

There's one or two shots where the little girl meets the Polar Bear Gandalf where the digital effects looked really good and the Bear looked real. For the rest of the movie it didn't.

The guy from the Big Lebowski didn't look stupid for about a second.

Was it Better than Dungeons and Dragons:

Yes but it shares some commonalities; Weak lead, lame climactic battle, Shakespearean actor picking up paycheck.

Recommend:

I think kids might like it. Their own imaginations will fill in the voids left in this movie. But they'll probably be looking forward to sequels that will most likely never happen.

Mediocroty Scale:

Just Mediocre

The Golden Compass

It's hard to say what was worse about this movie, the very digital effects or the constant stream of expositional dialogue. I kept wondering as we watched whether the cityscapes and backgrounds were original or borrowed from the models of Naboo created for Star Wars Episode I.

Pain scale score: 4 out of 10

Thankfully the snacks were better than the film. In addition to the always delicious Salt and Pepper flavored Kettle Chips we also sampled the new (to me) flavor of Oreo cookies, Strawberry Milkshake. To my surprise and delight the cookies were actually pretty good - the strawberry flavor worked well with the chocolate cookie.