Robin Hood or Apple TV steels from the poor and gives to itself.

Jason and I have been watching films together for a long time now.  Since the 20th Centrury.  We've seen a lot of home movie technologies come and go.

It started with VHS.  The quality was shite, the films were Pan & Scanned and the TV's were small and the screens curved out.  Then VHS tapes got wide screened.  At some point I had a ridiculously expensive Laser Disc player that would flip the discs on it's own  making crazy mechanical sounds as it did it. It broke before I watched maybe 20 films on it but since there weren't that many Laser Discs around it didn't matter.  (Of Note: for years I refused to throw that hunk of metal out because I was always going to "fix it" like some kind of crazy hoarder. It only went into the trash in 2006) Then of course came DVD's which became the regular ritual as it is known today.   We moved up to larger TV's 27", 32" tube TVs with flat screens and fancy things like Tipple Comb Noise Filter and Surround Sound.  Finally came Blue Ray, 1080p, and massive TVs; Jason has a large LCD flat screen and I project my movies on to a Screen that is 10 feet wide. But due to downloading legal and illegal is Blue Ray like laser disc not long for this world?  Maybe. 

Jason got Apple TV for Christmas this year so last night we were going to sample the latest most convenient technology that is supposed to replace all these wacky wasteful discs.  All you have to do is scroll to your favorite new movie select it and off you go.  No driving to the video store in the cold, no aimless wandering in the aisles, no snotty Video Store staff reminding us of our younger selves making us long for an innocence and youth long lost and forgotten.  Just easy scrolling and selecting.  We even decided to make the food run for this viewing extra special and drove all the way across the Canada USA border to sample that latter nations greater selection of snack food wares.  With the extra time we were going to save just simply choosing a film from a menu we could afford to drive farther for something more exotic, and what's more exotic than the Cost Cutter in Blaine, Washington.  It was. An Unmitigated. Disaster. 

After what turned out to be a quite lengthy trip to the USA, what with the border line ups, sheer real-estate size of the Cost Cutter, a slight detour due to an out of date GPS map, and general lethargy by us we returned tired and eager for some crappy movie fun.  On goes the Apple TV.  The selection sucked.  It was like looking at a New Release wall from 2010, we had seen most of these movies. It seemed like Jason couldn't figure out the menus or they were hard to use but the same movies kept scrolling through again and again. (When did Edward Norton and Robert Deniro do a film where Edward Norton has corn rows?  It looks retarded.)  Finally after we scrolled confusingly past Russel Crowe's face brandishing a bow for like the tenth time we just gave up and decided to watch Riddley Scott's Robin Hood, staring said Aussie musician.  This took I would say no less time than going to the video store and aimlessly walking around the aisles.  At least then we would have been getting some exercise, here we were just sitting annoyed getting myopia looking at the endlessly scrolling cover boxes.  

Then the real trouble started. I got up to pee and when I came back Jason was mumbling something about how he had selected the wrong version of the film and now we were going to have to watch the PG14 version not the Unrated Version because once you select something you can't go back.  Then the thing reset itself.  No explanation no download it just went back to the main screen.  Jason had to go back through the menus but this time selected the Unrated.  And of course now the thing told him he was going to have to pay for both.  He started to get upset and in his fluster he chose the 14A version again and refused any mention of the Unrated because if he clicked on it "they" would know he had watched some of it and make him pay and he had to call "them" in the morning to cancel. I don't know who "they" are but I just want them to let me watch the right goddamn movie.  

Finally it looked like we were going to watch the film.  Not the version of the film we wanted to watch but at least a film.  A scroll bar appeared on the bottom and that wheel thing like in YouTube videos appeared at the centre of the screen to tell us something was happening.  And we waited, and waited, and waited, and waited.  Finally a message appeared telling us we only had 5hours and 17minutes left of this download.  At this point I started waving my arms and yelling like a Neanderthal but my yelps were cut short because the screen had changed and the movie in all its 14A glory had started.  There were men dressed in scary costumes running through the woods setting fire to a village, then the lady from the opening of Lord of the Rings appeared looking super intense with a bow and arrow about to shoot it at the scary figures when....the image froze and the wheel in the middle of the screen reappeared. 

Jason then proceeded to mumble something about ethenet cables and wireless and stomp around at the back of his TV pulling on rat nest of wires connectors looking like a giant moth larva trapped in some technological spider web.  All that changed was that a new message appeared informing us that it would only take 3 hours for our download now.  My Neanderthal yelps resumed and we were forced to give up.  All this took a terribly long time and it was getting late and we're no longer those young innocent video store clerks that can afford to sleep in till the afternoon.  We're adults that have to wake up early and take on the world.  

Gripes

Apple TV sucks

What Worked

I got to see 3 minutes of Robin Hood and in that 3 minutes it looked like shite so I guess I was saved from watching it this time.  Also not to let the whole night go to waste we watched Bourne Ultimatum on DVD and it worked and it Owned.  And since we had both seen the movie a few times before we could talk through out it and share our feelings on prejudice: It's wrong. 

Is It Better than Dungeons and Dragons
If Apple TV were a movie it would be Dungeons and Dragons starring a bored, tired, and defeated Jeremy Irons.

Mediocrity Scale

Bellow Mediocre.  Apple TV just does not work.  It didn't work at all.  At all. It was a terrible mess. I hope it wasn't expensive although I'm sure it was.  I'm sorry.  I feel sorry for you. I wish I could help.  I wish I could make it better.  I can't.  All I can do is write this long rambling scathing review that no one will read. 

Food.

The snacks were actually quite good. Although Cost Cutter is huge the selection of snack foods was still underwhelming.  It was basically the same stuff in Canada but more competitively priced and in larger and brighter packaging.  The most exciting thing that isn't available up north was the Throwback Pepsi and Mountain Dew.  These are limited editions of these pops that are made with real sugar not sucrose and the original 1900's formulations.  The Mountain Dew was the best as it tasted quite refreshing and juicy, almost healthy vs it's modern day counter part.  The Pepsi didn't taste much different I don't think.  It was rather bland in my opinion.  We also got Doritos, Toasted Corn flavour which apparently also is not sold in Canada and with good reason because it just tastes like regular corn Nachos;  bland and boring.  I want my Doritos to have some artificial flavor zest and burn my tongue by the sixth one.  Next we had TGI Fridays brand Mozzarella Sticks and Jose Ole's Shredded Steak Taquitos.  I think these items are available in Canada but their cost has always made them forbidden.  Luckily Americans love greasy microwavable snack foods for cheap so we were able to get them.  They were both delicious and tasty out of the oven; not too dry or greasy, though that might have something to do with Jason's super fantastic fancy oven. The sticks came with marinarra dipping sauce and it was delectable to dip into.  Well done.  

Sorcerereres Apprentice

Ugh.  Really we're watching this?

Gripes
What if you took that one part in Empire Strikes Back where Luke goes to Degobah and learns the ways of the force from Yoda and turned it into a whole two hour movie and replaced Yoda with a haggard and sedated Nicolas Cage and Luke with an even worse actor than the guy that played Luke and the force with magic.  Oh and Alfred Molina is doing something too but who cares.  The movie opens with a long creepy sounding voice over sequence about Merlin and his apprentices and how they are fighting the Borg Queen or something because she wants to destroy the world.  Really that's what she wants to do.  She doesn't want to rule it or anything she just wants to destroy everything including I would assume herself.  How lame.  Anyway Merlin dies and Nic Cage traps the Borg Queen in a Russian  Doll along with his girlfriend and Alfred Molina.  Fast forward a thousand years and Nic has spent all this time looking for (are you bored yet, this is only the first five minutes of the movie) looking for the Prime Merlinian who will inherit all of Merlin's powers because he/she (I don't think in the montage Nic tries any girls but I'll be more gender neutral than the movie) has some of Merlin's blood in them.  Whatever. Any way the kid from the Pizza Pop ads is the Prime Merlinian and he has to overcome being an awkward science geek so he can date this girl and save the world.   Nic finds the kid then the movie fast-forwards another ten years and he finds him again then we have the looooooong boring empire sequence where the opening expository narration is now repeated over and over by Nic Cage to the kid and then finally Pizza Pop kid uses science and his Merlin powers to defeat the Borg Queen.  Very Tidy by the numbers and totally lacking any personality.  Everyone seems to be sleep walking through this, writers, director, Molina, Cage, random blonde love interest, the effects people.  The only person not sleep walking is the Pizza Pop kid; he tires so hard but I don't know if it's the editing or the directing but he just ends up being one note and the timing of all the jokes is cut to shit.

What worked
At one point it looks like Cage and Pizza kid will have to fight all these magicians one by one using clever tricks.  But that's not what happens.  In fact Molina who's sorta the main baddy kills all the other magicians for them with a vulcan death pinch or something. It's awful and lazy. So I guess what worked is a momentary moment where it looked like the movie would be cool and there's a car chase that was maybe for a micro second cool when it wasn't poorly paced and cg'ed to indifference.

Mediocrity Scale
Telephoned.  As in everyone phoned it in.

Is it Worse than Dungeons and Dragons
It does have a dragon in it at one point; one of those big screaming CG dragons that lets the heroes jump out of the way just in time from it's loud screechy digital jaws.  I would have to say the movie is better; it's so uncreative that it's unoffensive, and there's a car chase that's boring but I could pretend that it could be better.

Food
Kellog Cinabon granola bars; 12 in a box so six each.  The box claims that these are around "For a Limited Time Only" and I think the world will be a better place once that time runs out.  These taste like crumbly uncooked batter slathered in the cheapest and worst sugary icing.  I don't remember tasting any cinnamon but I'm sure there was some there.  I don't recommend eating one of these things let alone six.  The sugar content kept me up all night sweating icing. I can't remember but I think we had cheese Doritos as well or it could be that the Cinabon things made me hallucinate the Doritios whilst in some kind of Diabetic shock comma.

Jennifer's Body

The French title for this film is Le Corpse de Jennifer. The use of the word corpse is quite appropriate here, cause this movie has all the life of one. Boom Zing.

Gripes
You know I bet if you wrote a quirky little screenplay about a clever teen preggo that was critically acclaimed and made it all the way to the Oscars you'd be pretty high on yourself. I bet you'd feel like you could effing do anything, hell I bet that you'd think you could write a killer teen horror flick and knock it out of the park. Well, you'd be wrong. I'm sure everyone involved in the making of Jennifer's Body probably felt pretty good about the project. I mean hell, it stars sex pot Meghan Fox of 2 hour GM robot advertisement fame, the screenplay is written by none other than the writer of last years indie-breakout film Juno, and it's about teens having sex and getting eaten by a monster. What could go wrong? Plenty.

This movie is boring.  Just plain boring.  The action is boring, the writing is boring, and the acting is boring.  I think the reason that it is so boring is that no one cares, this is the ultimate hipster horror film in that everyone in it is too cool to care so there's no stakes because guess what; if you don't care, I don't care so why the hell are we all here, just turn off the movie and go home.

What Worked
The girl that plays the lead is a good actor and I could tell that she was trying to care which was probably discouraged on the set.  But she tried.

Is It Better than Dungeons and Dragons
Yes.

Mediocrity Scale
Less than Just Mediocre.  It tries to be subversive and good but ends up being boring and lame.

Food
I started writing this review over a year ago and have long forgotten what we ate; I'm sure it was bad for me.

Gamer

Gerard Butler, the guys who made Crank, Dexter, and Keira Knightley, what could go wrong? Plenty.

Gripes
I liked Crank. It had great fun characters, decent action, and it used the conventions of video gaming to tell a cinematic story. Now Gamer takes the conventions of 1st person shooters and makes a big pile of crap on the screen. I had no idea what was happening, or at least I didn't care. Most of the movie is all shaky and jump cutty like your watching it through a bad internet connection or something. There's lots of shooting and blowing things up but none of it is linear or logical so it's just shooting and blowing things up for the sake of making loud noises and flashes on the screen. When there is any dialogue, following in the 1st person shooter vain, it's all poorly scripted exposition that you could give a crap about. Dexter wants to control the world with nanites blah blah blah. There's no logic, there's barely a story, and the action sucks.

What Worked
There's some nudity but it's so pointless and shot to make it look horrible and ugly that it didn't need to be there. There'slots bloody violence but it looks fake and not in a fun way so it's useless. There's one hand to hand fight scene near the end of the film that felt linear and real, that's about it. Dexter does his Dexter thing but I can see that in Dexter and it's much more interesting there. So not much worked for me.

Mediocrity Scale
Below Mediocre, barely trying.

Better than Dungeons & Dragons?
I really didn't enjoy this movie. It's just that it so doesn't make any sense as a cohesive film, it's just a bunch of loud crap vomited up on the screen for the sake of being 'cool'. I think it comes close to being at least as bad as Dungeons and Dragons but it did have that one good fistacuffs and there is shooting of guns and peoples heads getting blown up and bare breasts, so at least it tried a bit harder than D&D.

Food
Some kind of 'Real Dairy' ice cream; tasty and creamy. And Cplus; which made me extremely thirsty for anything else.

The International

Decent, slow really really slow international thriller. Smart looking but dumb.

Gripes
This movie follows in the footsteps of international thrillers like Syrianna or Michael Clayton, but the biggest difference between those movies and this is that those movies were well written and always a step ahead of their audience, forcing the audience to pay attention and think. The International however is not clever enough to stay ahead of the audience. Early on there are long scenes with lots of expository dialogue that basically explain the whole thing and just in case you weren't paying attention the info is repeated through out. Basically this big bank is bad, so bad that they control everything ooooh. Okay we get it. There's also some convoluted plot about selling guidance systems for missiles to terrorists but it's really inconsequential. You don't have to pay attention to the International, infact I challenge any one just to watch the first 10 seconds of each DVD chapter, you will I'm sure have the exact same summary of the film as someone who watched the whole thing, but you will have saved lots of time.

What Worked
Clive Owen is always cool and that blonde actress was good. It all happens in Bahauss Europe and is spectacularly shot so as a travel video of cool buildings in Europe it works really well. VW AG also provided the cars so there's lots of cool shots of Audi's and VW driving around Europe so if you like that you'll be impressed. Finally Evil German Industrialist villains are always kind of cool. At one point the movie gets a pulse and there's a ridiculous oozie shootout at the Gugenheim (I told you it's all Bahaus), it's clearly how the movie got it's R rating but it's still somehow lacks real tension just like the rest of the film. It's shoehorned in and story wise the characters are in the exact same place before and after the shootout so it could have been like five seconds or not in the film at all. Clive Owen gets shot in the face though and that's cool, but later he doesn't seem to notice it.

Mediocrity Scale
Meciocre

Better than Dungeons and Dragons?
Yes. The R rating alone raises it above D&D, it's also shot with competency.

Food
We had real Root Beer floats with real vanilla ice cream. Also Cakesters and double chocololate chip cookies to complete the Insulin shock.

Commando + Ransom = Taken

I wasn't that impressed by the trailers for Taken. The idea of Qui-Gon Jinn going on a rampage Charles Bronson style on the men who kidnapped his daughter seemed pretty weak. I wondered how well Qui-Gon would be able to convey the proper emotional response when speaking with the kidnappers. However, given the choice between renting Taken and the latest Underworld abomination, I was happy to give way to my curiosity and find out if Qui-Gon was up to the challenge.

Like John Matrix before him, Qui-Gon is a retired special agent/army type who just wants to live a quiet life and be a good dad. How will Qui-Gon react when his daughter wants to go to Paris with her best friend for the summer? Not too well. Despite his reservations, his ex-wife (another thankless role for Famke Janssen) guilts him into agreeing to the scheme and away they go.

It doesn't take long for the girls to get into trouble. Like all good best friend characters in these kinds of movies, best friend has "loose morals" and announces that she's going to have sex with that guy from the airport who offered to share a cab. With the countdown to best friend's demise under way, a group of kidnappers arrive to abduct the girls. Now daddy's got just 96 hours to track down the bastards who kidnapped his daughter and get some revenge.

With the setup out of the way we get to the action. The good: innocent people get used as human shields, large body count, well choreographed (for the most part) fight scenes (think Jason Bourne style). The bad: the car chases are terrible. During one chase scene at some sort of factory/mining operation it is at times difficult to tell who exactly is chasing who.

The movie ends predictably enough, and I can't say I really have any complaints except that 1) the stupid ex-wife doesn't get any sort of comeuppance and 2) there is a lame subplot involving a Britney Spears type character whose life Qui-Gon saves near the beginning of the movie while on assignment. Said subplot is revisited at the tail end of the movie for no good reason. Maybe that was just in the extended cut?

Pain score: 1 of 10.

Special note on the snacks this week. I was recently in the states for a shopping trip and brought back a four pack of bottled A&W Rootbeer Floats. This is the kind of product I love. It's only available in the United States because a product like this could only exist in a place like the United States.

Think about this. This is a drink that contains (amongst a number of chemical ingredients) milk. That's right, milk. But unlike a carton of milk, you won't find this float in the dairy aisle. It's on the shelf, unrefrigerated. Disturbing.

If there is any doubt in your mind, the drink is foul. Possibly the worst snacktime beverage we have ever had.

Taken

What happens when the foreigners of the world kidnap America's teenage daughters to use as sex slaves? America sends Liam Neeson to kick their fucking ass.

Gripes:

My biggest gripe has to be with the green screen shots of people driving. They look like something out of Sinefeild. 1990 called, they want their greenscreen back. Also the girl playing the daughter was like 40 and kind of annoying so it was hard to beleive she was so naive and it was kind of okay that she got kidnapped and turned into a sex slave. Poor casting.

Overall I don't have a lot gripes with this films. It does what it advertises; Liam Neeson's daughter gets kidnapped and so he goes and kicks the kidnappers ass. These are the worst anti-American kidnapers, they're based in France, they're Albanian, in cahoots with corrupt French spies, that sell virgin American daughters to Middle-Eastern sheiks via corrupt business men. American headline fears rolled up into one neat package, I'm surprised they weren't doing it to encourage Global Warming. Retired CIA special Operative Liam Neeson goes after them, tortures them, kills them, and finally delivers his daughter into the hands of an American teen pop star analogue to get career training. Ironically his daughter's kidnapping experiences have given her some of the training to be an American Teen pop star already, half naked dancing and all. So in a way Neason saves his daughter from being pimped out to Saudi Sheiks to be pimped out to the American public. USA USA USA.

What worked:
It feels good. Seeing foreign terrorists and their like get horribly killed by mild-mannered Neeson is strangely satisfying. Every man in that theatre could sympathise with Neason, if it was my daughter I would do the same. Of course I'm not a CIA operative so probably I would just roll up on the floor and cry and call the police or something.

Neason is a good action star. He creates a real three dimensional person here not just some mindless killing machine and it helped to get me involved in the story because the script certainly didn't.

Mediocrity Scale:
Just Above Mediocre

Better than D&D:
Yes, cohesive story and cathartic violence.

Food:
Awful Awful things. 5 Pogos which are disgusting in themselves but washed down with a horrible abomination that Jason brought from the USA; A&W rootbeer float in a bottle. All the goodness of a Root beer float, in a bottle. It was super sweet. Like cheap ice cream that melted in root beer syrup, then was left out in the sun until rotted. It made me want to barf. If someone asked "what is robot jizz like?" I would point them in the direction of A&W rootbeer float in a bottle.