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".
Monday, August 25, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
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.
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.
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.
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