CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER by jaiskizzy

gist: after many failed attempts to join the military, steve rogers' patriotic persistence and self-less valor make him the perfect candidate for the super soldier program. from scrawny to brawny, he becomes captain america, the country's bellwether against the nazis. mighty shield in hand and the howling commands right behind him, the star spangled man takes on the menace known as the hydra, led by the crimson craniumed agent schmidt. all together now: america, fuck yeah!

reaction: does anyone else rememer the old captain america cartoon with the stiff movements and the very catchy theme? how about the low-budget captain america movie in the '90s? beyond those two and a few comic issues, i really didnt know much about the guy with the capital a on his forehead. wasnt really into the character, probably because im pinoy. so, when the news of this movie being made broke out, other than solidifying the possibility of an avengers movie, i didn't know what to expect. will it be a great comic book movie in line with its marvel predecessors? will it be an indiana jonesy adventure flick? will it be chock full of action but story anemic or vice versa? will i stop asking questions and get on with the review?

it's really good. it's one of the best comic book movies ever made, with just the right amount of pulp and camp, action with impact, and a story that's rich and compelling. joe johnston directed the rocketeer, which was awesome, and he was able to infuse into captain america the positives that made rocketter one of my favorite guilty pleasure films. much like the super serum, he took the thin pages of the comic book and injected it with his vision and made it come to pulsating life on film. i love that he took time with the origin section to really capture the essence of steve rogers' character and give meaning to his every move as the blue boy scout. a satisfying spectacle from start to finish.

i admit, i wasn't initially convinced chris evans would fit the role. he's the guy who wore the whipped cream bikini in one movie and played human torch in the other, hard to take him seriously. but i guess i underestimated his acting skills because the dude delivered. with the help of seamless cgi tinkering, he embodied both versions of steve rogers to a tee. i cant even imagine now what the movie would have been like if will smith had been cast. also worth mentioning were the performances of tommy lee jones and hugo weaving.

speaking of mr. weaving, red skull was just superb. apart from the other obvious uses, the visual effects on the villain was amazing. the texture, contours, the lip movement, menacingly creepy but glues your eyes to the screen.  also, this is one of those films where you wonder if anything was left to gather dust in the cutting room floor at all because the narrative was smooth and fluid, with beat-perfect transitions between scenes instead of a firm chapter-based structure. heck, even the montages gelled well with the finely-tuned story progression.

marvel has done it once again. captain america is a testament that respect for the source material and the audience are the main components to a successful comic book adaptation. your move, dc.

good: the adaptation, pulp, chris evans

bad: peggy carter

ugly: hugo weaving

verdict: 9 vials of super serum

fucky barnes.

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TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON by jaiskizzy

gist: after saving the world twice from decepticons, life seems to be back to normal for sam "ladiesman217" witwicky with a new out-of-his-league girlfriend and a struggle to find a job. meanwhile, the autobots have been doing some freelance asskickin and on one of their 'con hunts, they uncover a government secret that would make conspiracy junkies crap bricks: the old space race was caused by a cybertronian ship that crashed on the moon. earth is once again the ring for an all-out robot royal rumble that will finally determine the fate of mankind and the franchise's fourth film.

reaction: the needs of many outweight the needs of a few and the many disappointed geeks who watched revenge of the fallen needed a better movie, myself included. part two wasn't a piece of crap but it was near the raped-my-childhood level, particularly with the devastator bullshit. so explosions expert, michael bay, was given a chance to close the trilogy and redeem himself. end result: although this threequel is far from the excellence of the first, it definitely makes the second one forgivable.

michael bay is the go-to guy when you want to blow stuff up in movies. he has mastered the art of mayhem. every action sequence with the bots was pitch perfect. i couldnt imagine how he sets these up. you see a decepticon flipping cars over and a car that transforms then reverts to car mode and you believe it because it looks real. that alone is a testament to michael bay's distinct destruction direction. sure, he needs to do a lot of homework plot-wise but lots of other directors have that covered. only a completely misguided moron would come into a michael bay film and expect the profound and the pathos of kubrickian scale. the same idiot would easily get bored at the non-action parts. it's mike's weakness, yes, but these scenes are there for a reason. one is so that you could catch your breath. they dont require you to cerebrate, you just have to pay the same attention you gave the pyrotechniques and listen. (and if you did, you'd actually have known what a certain character was going to do long before) i really think there should be a sign outside to leave your elitist snob hat or the adhd cap of your inner child at the entrance and enjoy the mecha porn.

in the first two films, sam is thrust into the fray mostly because he cant opt out. here, with the world oblivious to his heroics, he involves himself by his choosing, making the character more mature, and i believe shia did really well portraying that. backing him up are some new faces, great actors in silly roles. malkovich as a crazy boss and mcdormand as a quirky government agent. but i liked the addition of tudyk the best. dutch needs a movie of his own. and so we arrive at the meat of the matter, the switcheroo issue that everyon's fussing about more than the film itself. am i alone in liking carly better than mikaela? megan fox has the two-movie, fantard-following edge, she's sex appeal in the flesh but she cant act to save her life. rosie huntington-whiteley, although nowhere near oscar material, had greater range as a first-time actress. also she had something megan fox doesnt: charm. and that british accent easily disqualifies her as a skank. case in point: in part one, the first time sam's parents sees mikaela, she just stands there, exuding the trophy-gf vibe to stress how lucky sam got. here, everytime sam introduces carly to anyone, she's so bubbly and affable. bottom line: cameron diaz clone > ms. stubby thumbs.

other things i liked were how real world events were incorporated into the mythos, the flying squirrel scene, and the comic relief. and i'll say as little as i can about the cgi cast to avoid spoilers. it's still good to hear peter cullen voicing optimus prime. it was cool to hear leonard nimoy as sentinel prime who looks just like him. liked the new ferrari autobot but not the wreckers. was still hoping to see starscream (my fave) as the scheming sycophant but alas he's underused yet again. still no sign of the dinobots or unicron. and when optimus prime said they had a ship that can take them to the moon, i thought sky lynx? omega supreme?!? but nah. it was astrotrain. (just kidding) also, absence of gestalts was a big minus.

anyways, transformers: dark of the moon was not the best way to end the trilogy (kinda abrupt) but it's entertainingly satisfying. the long queue an hour before screening, the applause when the credits roll and the growing profit from ticket sales mean only one thing: even if there's a decepticon that transforms into a toilet and rosie huntington-whiteley sits on it for two hours, people will come to watch. actually, that's a good idea if you think about it.


the good: the bots, the mayhem, the new chick
the bad: lack of strong story and character development
the ugly: john malkovich
the verdict: 8 energon detectors



sentinel grime

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GREEN LANTERN by jaiskizzy

gist: van wilder is a cocky cockpit jockey who becomes the first human member of a space police force called the green lantern corps. he is given a power ring which, through his will and imagination, he can use to make constructs in his fight against evil. with the moled gossip girl in tow, he must prove his mettle by defeating the hydrocephalic hector hammond and ginormous being of fear known as parallax. all together now: in brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. wish i may wishi might have this wish i wish tonight!

reaction:after the success of iron man, and most recently thor, it was no surprise that dc would expedite the adaptation of their titles. however, instead of following batman's triumph with a better superman reboot or a wonder woman film, they chose to imitate their marvelous rival and decided to introduce a second-tier character to the theater patrons. i have no deep knowledge of the green lantern stories, but i knew the basics. it obviously had a more of a sci-fi lean than fantasy, and so i, and much of the moviegoers, expected a visually appealing, story-rich space opera. however, with the opening backstory narration failing to hook the audience, this movie was ripe for nitpicking from the get-go.

the keyword for this movie is convenience. the script was written in such the way that nearly every scene that moves the plot forward seemed convenient. with lots of telescopes in the world, i cant believe nobody saw abin-sur's ship enter the earth's atmosphere. he crashed on a beach and surprisingly, there was no one there. and when hal jordan was whisked away by the green orb thing, he was standing in an empty street. i could go on but that would be practically retelling the whole movie. this lazy script was also peppered with cheesy lines and im not buying the excuse that it was intentional, for humor, campiness, not taking itself seriously. ryan reynolds sure seemed serious when he said "he was afraid" like a little boy in a bad coming-of-age b-movie. but i'll get to the acting in a sec.

i dont know what happened but this surely wasn't martin campbell's cup of tea. his direction had a lot of misfires and there were many poorly executed scenes. some were just downright funny even though they were meant for laughs (parallax's end of the street attack). also i dont understand how green lantern can fly from earth to oa and back repeatedly and parallax's trip takes three-quarters of the film's run time. also there's suddenly a big event gathering the main human characters where some shit happens so that green lantern can showcase his power publicly for the first time. and then there's that mid-credits scene that in the context of the movie doesn't make any sense at all. put there solely for the purpose of teasing a sequel without providing proper character development for the involved party. i mean, green lantern's weakness against the color yellow wasn't even explored at all...

the film had its merits but they were few. the cgi was nice, but not wow-factor impressive. i liked the second skin suits that channeled an automan vibe with the animated chest logo. i liked how the suit was a construct, and therefore had to be cgi, and the cumbersome putting on of normal clothes in contrast with the insta-costume was a good touch. there's little bits of positives here and there (like the star sapphire nod) but the only other pluses worth mentioning are the performances of sinestro and hector hammond. the supposed eyecandy blake lively was pretty much useless other than being the love story foil, which felt forced. as for hal jordan, it's hard to look at ryan reynolds and not giggle at his attempt to win an oscar. he's convincing when he's being arrogant, but beyond that, the guy from buried was nowhere to be found.

anyways, i guess this has pulled back the possibility of a justice league movie a dozen notches. a haphazard amalgam of what worked from previous comicbook films, this green lantern's light is pretty dim.


good: hammond, sinestro, suit
bad: script and direction
ugly: hammond
verdict: 6 power rings



the grim lantern.

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THOR by jaiskizzy

gist: on the day of his kinging, thor is instead punished by his father, odin, for his arrogance by stripping him of his god mojo and banishing him to midgard, as surreptitiously orchestrated by his envious stepbro, loki. with the black swan on his side, the asgardian douchebag must endure an earthbound lesson on humility to regain his powers by proving he is worthy to stand once again as thor, the god of thunder! (violently shakes a piece of sheet metal)

reaction: ever since marvel meddled in the filmifying of their comic book properties, output quality has considerably increased. a big slice of this improvement is the fact that the movies had been made-to-measure to please both comic book fans and non-fans alike. a great example is iron man, a relatively second-tier character in the marvel universe. after the two box office hits, his cosplay presence was cemented. hot on his jetboot heels, aiming for the same is thor, an even more obscure marvel character, virtually unknown to non-readers, especially when compared to the superhero triumvirate of superman, batman and spider-man. and pun intended, thor hit the nail on the head. (loki facepalm)

i thought kenneth branagh was an odd choice to direct but i stand corrected because loveless delivered the goose, especially in the non-earth scenes where the language is in shakespearean. when the first set and costume photos came out, they gave a campy vibe and the geek consesus was this would be the tensies flash gordon. but by odin's beard, we were proven wrong when it all hit the silverscreen in ethereal 3d. kenny has done a wonderful job of turning a mythical realm into a beautiful place in space and making its existence believable. plus, i absolutely must praise his theater-ish framing and blocking, and how thor arrived god-sized and gradually turned to human height as the story progressed. it is also worth pointing out that jokes were sparse and that thor's terrestrial descent did not call for a learning-the-earthly-ways comedic montage. 

i genuflect in thought at the mortal named chris hemsworth. this guy came from nowhere and just ninja smokebombed his way into popularity. he embodied thor pretty well, perfecting that smug smile and asgardese. i also have high praise for the guy who played loki, who amazingly looked so much like loki. that was some great schemer/faux innocence/unhinged outburst acting. the portman as jane foster was kind of meh but better her than some bimbo actress who wouldnt have been convincing in a high iq role. it was also great to see kakihara as hogun but i dont think he fit the role. i think oh-dae su would have made a better hogun. and then there's kat dennings whose comic relief role was immaterial. darcy who? there wasnt even a darcy in the comics. i wonder who she  to have herself squeezed into this movie. seriously, her addition was a subtraction.

so yeah, marvel has proven once again that you can make a damn good comic book film. you just have to have the right people, a compelling story and respect for the source material. sure, ticket sales dont necessarily mean great movie, but comic adaptations are always on a hit or miss case. and considering that the vast majority of moviegoers arent fans of the inked pencils and the onomatopoeia, thor is a thunderous triumph. can't wait for the avengers movie! joss whedon make it awesome! 

good: hemsworth, hiddleston, branagh
bad: throwaway characters, single location
ugly: them frost giants
verdict: 8 broken mugs


assguardian.

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SUCKER PUNCH by jaiskizzy

gist: violet baudelaire is sent to a mental institution for poor marksmanship. there, she dreamweaves being in a brothel where clothes-deprived girls dance to survive. (why she chose that particular fantasy, i'll never know) in this imaginary realm, she concocts the idea to escape as per a wise man's instructions in another world she had imagined while dancing. inception much? with the help of four other girls, baby doll gyrates her virginal hips for attention in the first layer pseudoworld and goes kick-ass mode in the second layer pseudoworld to obtain the five items essential to their freedom.

reaction: first, a quickie on the sucker punch hate brigade. most of the criticism seems to stems from the fact that something else was expected from the film. some wanted packed action and were put off by the ponder-prompting metaplot. some demanded taut storytelling and were bitchslapped by all the armed fighting. why oh why do these people enter the movie theater to look at a painting? yes, you paid good money to be entertained but it doesn't mean you're just going to passively sit there and wait for whatever it is you want to see or hear and curse the movie to tartarus if you don't.

anyways, sucker punch is basically alice in wonderland gangbanged by 300. girls in an imagined setting doing unreal feats. but underneath all the fist and bullet trading is a story that, although simple enough to catch, requires a deeper train of thought for proper comprehension. but even then you'd still have doubts for certain aspects point elsewhere. that feeling where you need to debate what the movie's about or to recall details that one could have missed, let's call it the "afterview". and smart moviegoers who absorbed at least the bits and pieces of the film's true meaning will be engaged in further discussions due to a lingering afterview.

the pussy parade is led by emily browning. she's lookin all grown up here. i really didnt think she'd work, never having seen her in any role like this but she played the innocent girl with a badass slut inside real well. she also smoothly flew through the fight scenes. this is her show of course but it would have been greater if the same amount of screen time was relegated to her mysteriously enthralling dance routine, which was limited to the lame sway intro. as for the deuteragonist damsels, they did their parts okay but a teeny bit more characterization would have made the turncoating valid. plus in movies like this, you really don't for high-grade acting so vanessa hudgen's wallslide crying was weird.


there are a number of action set pieces that bend reality, all awesomely executed, but my favorite is the first one with the giant shoguns. it's a great way to immerse the audience to baby doll's dance-triggered world (where they all defy gravity but land the exact same way). there's a scene in the dressing room where the girls are talking and the camera makes an impossible one-take shot. this i think encapsulates how zack snyder uses the advancements in cgi to put a skew on traditional filmmaking. the action scenes, the color correction, the shots, nearly everything he has done here is abusing the technology. years ago, none of it could be done in the same magnitude. sure, with avatar and a gazillion cgi cartoons, the envelope has been pushed a lot but snyder has distinct style that reroutes where all those rendered pixels can go. and with sucker punch, the clunks of cgi physics (especially with real human character interaction), wirework and slow-mo/fast-mos are gone, leaving a nigh-perfect jaw-detaching eyecandy overdose.

i like how sucker punch is both a fanservice to guys and a girl power push for girls. i like how the main characters are girls in whorific costumes but sensually downplayed with no ass shots or in your face boobs, integral to most action flicks. it's not a great movie but it's really not as bad as some consider. i am definitely on board for the zack snyder superman.



good: action sequences, the visuals, the "afterview"
bad: little character development, studio cuts
ugly: vanessa hudgens
verdict: 8 lobotomy needles



sweet pee/baby dull.

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SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR by jaiskizzy

gist: i am honestly lost for words. nothing can be said enough to summarize this movie, yet on the other hand, a one-sentence description of any scene may be too much. this is one of those films best viewed with virgin eyes.

reaction: holymotherfuckinshitballs. what did i just watch? roy andersson's sånger från andra våningen (or songs from the second floor, to the non-swedish readers) is definitely one of the weirdest films i have ever seen. and i love every odd frame of it. it starts with a guy talking to another guy who is inside a tanning bed and its just gets weirder and weirder from there. all scenes are shot static (except for one, if i remember correctly) framed in a way that the main focus is on the particular characters central to the sequence at hand but with room for extras and events in the background or on the sides to memontarily capture your attention. there is one where in there's a long road in the background and as the scene progresses, you realize that there are people who have been actually walking along that road beginning from horizon cut-off at the very start of the scene towards character situated at the sequence focal point. weird, eh? but something even weirder happens right after. yes, i am a junkie getting ultra high on weirness overdose.

funny is the other simple word i can associate with this complex peculiarity. everything is done seriously and nearly every scene is glum, but there'll be lines of dialogue, actions and little things that made me laugh, kind of like the way you laugh when you're outside and you see something bad happen to someone and you're not supposed to laugh but you cant help it (schadenfreude). it's exactly that. not corny or forced or inserted for a longer run time. this is a level of funny no pinoy slapstick comedy movie could ever attain. and beyond the absurdist comedy is the profound way the scenes meld together. there's a scene that didn't seem to make any sense and then later on, it a connecting scene reveals that the previous one was actually a rehearsal. mental drop kick!

this movie is proof that creativity has no bounds. you can always do something new and different. only people who arent born creative, who have no self-developed vision would say otherwise and insist imitation. i dont know who this roy andersson guy is but he just blipped in my directorial radar. he's on an entirely different plateau, a place i wanna stand on the precipice of and jump off one day.


good: the weirdness, the funniness, the progression of scenes
bad: lack of backstories
ugly: lasse's wife. half-naked. ugh.
verdict: 10 jesus-swinging-on-one-nail crucifixes


thongs from the second drawer.

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THE GREEN HORNET by jaiskizzy

 gist: that guy who knocked up that bitch from grey's anatomy is so rich, he had lypoed all his fat off and is banging chicks on the hoods of luxury cars. and then his dad dies and he befriends a guy who looks like harold from harold and kumar who has ass-kicking listed in his resume. the two become overnight lawbreaking superheroes and soon are windborne dust in the eyes of the media-fed public and of disco santa claus, chudnofsky. and then an environmentalist kermit the frog wearing a la salle jacket starts telling green jokes, you know, just to make the whole thing greener.

reaction: i saw a couple of tv episodes and that scene in the bruce lee biopic where jason scott lee slides down a pole instead of using the stairs. also read a couple of issues of the kevin smith-penned comic. that's the range of knowledge i have about the green hornet. and im pretty sure most of the people who saw this movie know even less. so i find it annoying when they just flat-out say they didnt like the movie, them who were probably expecting something in the vein of nolan's batman and raimi's spider-man. there is so much to appreciate in the green hornet that i doubt they even noticed. one perfect example of this is during most of the mumblecore scenes, i was the only one laughing my balls out. there were some pretty funny lines that im sure didn't even reach their earlobes because, as with the average moviegoer these days, they weren't paying attention and were waiting for the next visual stimulus. these pinoyflick junkies and their longing for the loveteam's big kissing scene, the big drama slap-arama or the squeezed in joke stolen from current memes should not be even watching a film directed by michel gondry.

had i not shown my wife michel gondry's unique style, she probably wouldn't like the movie as she did. michel gondry is in a totally different directorial dimension and few really get his brilliance. with katovision, he showed the audience what most action movies eschew: how the asskicking is planned. you've seen action scenes where the protagonist takes down a whole gang of thugs seemingly impromptu, but of course, everything was rehearsed. kato lets us see how he processes the situation before taking action, hence katovision. and it is a-fuckin-mazing. wished gondry had used more of that multiplying background effect, just to give this new generation kato his own style. i was also blown way by the multiply splitscreen sequence. that thing is probably how you'll see your entire life flash before your eyes when you're about to die.

seth rogen's script is very seth rogenish. i understand the hate because he's a comedian and fat but you've got to give the guy some credit. his screenplay is peppered with funny stuff that are actually funny, and except for that one slapsticky bit in the end, none of them felt forced. his britt reid is a complete departure from the original, which fine because a serious millionaire playboy masquerading as a crimefighter is just another batman. as for jay chou, now, you know someone's a star when he's the sidekick but you know him more than the actor he's sidekicking for. im referring to bruce lee of course. he left a legacy that i strongly believe nobody will be able to equal. so it's only proper not to expect that much from jay chou. he struggled with english but he's okay as kato. but i really think it would have been a totally different movie if stephen chow had been kato. and then there's waltz who was great as the villain but was really sort of the same as hans landa. at least his character didnt need an origin story, where he's the product of something the hero did. he's already the bad guy, it's already his turf, and green hornet just basically shits in his kitchen. and finally, cameron diaz is not the cameron diaz we all salivated over for licking jim carrey's ear in the mask. wtf happened there? i dont know but edward furlong surely looks homeless.

conclusion: the best thing i could think of to defend my stance on this movie is this: round the interwebs some time ago was a faux trailer answerng the question what if wes anderson directed spider-man? dry humor, eccentric characters, indie rock music and the futura font. weird execution, totally different from what you'd expect but goshdarnit i would watch it and pretty sure would love it. green hornet is exactly that.

good: gondryisms, bruce lee homages, black beauty

bad: too much comedy.

ugly: cameron diaz. whose salad did she toss to land this gig?

verdict: 9 one-inch punches.

the grim horny.

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THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (First Sequence) by jaiskizzy

apercu:: a reclusive german surgeon who was once the best at separating siamese twins has gone cuckoo and has decided that doing the opposite of his former work is more fun. after successfully creating his sweet little three-dog, he moves up the food chain for his next diabolical project: the human centipede. lo and behold, two girls lost in the woods come knocking at his doorstep to be part of his effed-up experiment. ladies and gentlemen, the doctor is in...sane.

reaction: with people all over the intertubes making a collective cringe of disgust for the human centipede, it is only natural for me to have high expectations for this movie. as a film junkie, a large portion of my addiction for movies constitutes gore flicks. i just love gore. i dont know if having viewed so much of them has affected my aversion for the appalling or if i was simply born with a strong stomach, but after watching the human centipede, all i could think of was, "that was it?" roger ebert wouldnt even give it a star rating because according to him it exists where "stars don't shine." no, it doesn't mr. ebert. it exist in "promising but disappointing." the human centipede = not gross at all.

the only part that had any effect on me was when dr. heiter was explaining through an overhead projector what he was going to do to the victims. i had zero knowledge of what the movie title actually meant and when all was revealed, i had slight trepidations with continuing to watch the movie (much like when the 2 girls 1 cup video went meme). but of course curiosity won and i watched dr. heiter perform his peculiar procedure. which was kinda lame. the gore was next to nothing. and then when the human centipede was finished, i felt cheated. the garbage pail kids movie was more revolting. there's a movie with a near similar premise, crazy doctor abducts people and tortures them. it's entitle grotesque and is light years better than this.

the actors were pretty so-so, except for the japanese guy. the guy who played dr. heiter, i thought, overdid it. he was hamming it up like it was a theater play plus there was no evil behind his madness so i found his whole performance off-putting.

anyways, final words: the human centipede is more snore than gore. im sure there are plenty of people out there who'd still barf at this movie but for a better gore film experience, find and watch grotesque instead.


the good: the idea of the human centipede
the bad: dr. heiter, the actual human centipede, plotholes
the ugly: the japanese dude
the verdict: 4 glasses of water with rohypnol

dr. jaiter

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A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (2010) by jaiskizzy

apercu: teenagers dying from wet dreams. and by wet i meant because of blood. the moment they hit snooze mode, they enter nightmare zone and fall prey to freddy krueger, a guy who wears a fedora hat, striped shirt, a bladed glove and a face that looks like he scratched an itch here and there and forgot he was wearing said glove. why he kills them is what our insomniac protagonists must find out before mr. krueger decides to join iron chef with them as the secret ingredient.

remake schremake. why hollywood loves barfing these out, i'll never understand. out-of-work actors? because they are bad actors. with remakes, the cast is usually a who's who of who-are-yous. inclusion of bigtimers either means her/his career is decayed/decaying or will decay after the movie. money? nah. most remakes, especially in the horror genre, flop at the box-office. new audience? if so, then they mst believe that moviegoers of today are complete idiots because nearly every remake is a dumbed down version of the original. such is the case with this year's a nightmare on elm street.

if they wanted to introduce freddy krueger to the new masses who never met him before, then this is the worst way ever to do so. it's like, "hey, i'd like you to meet a friend of mine." and the guys just starts shitting in your face. what made the original film a classic has been replaced by a humongous pile of diarrhea. there is absolutely nothing frightening about this "horror" movie. there are more scares in taking a dump than watching this movie. the script is boring. for a movie about not wanting to fall asleep, this sure makes you want to. none of the nightmare deaths are creative. there are only about four kills and they didnt bother to make it interesting. there's one where a girl is lifted in the air and thrown around the room. it looks stupid, partly because it resembles the tori spelling scene in scary movie 2. and speaking of scene call, there's a part where the new nancy is in a car and she tries to stay awake by imitating mr. bean.

the biggest turd about this movie is the new freddy krueger. jackie earle haley was great as rorschach and creeptastic in little children but he doesnt translate well as freddy. this freddy is not scary or funny like in the original. he's just plain creepy, in a bad way. not just because they messed up his backstory by adding something pedobear would approve of. the whole portrayal didnt gel right. he's creepily twitching his finger blades together and yet with his creepy stalker voice he's giving out ridiculous one-liners. what's up with that? and why the hell did they have to change freddy's face? he looks like an alien. cant blame jackie boy though. with piece of crap script, half-ass direction and cardboard co-stars, you make do with what you have and take the cash.

a nightmare on elm street is a piece of crap through and through. i could imagine wes craven facepalming. also, i apologize for the incessant fecal references but shit is the only thing i could think of when talking about this movie. stick to blowing stuff up, michael bay.

the good: original bathtub scene nod

the bad: script, cast, direction

the ugly: freddy

the verdict: 2 jump ropes

skizobear

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AVATAR by jaiskizzy

apercu: just like how south park put it. it's dances with smurfs. but for anyone who gets off on synopses...it's the far future and a wheelchair-bound ex-marine fills in for his dead brother and is sent to planet pandora to help out with research on the blue cat-people called na'vi. jacked into a genetically engineered na'vi, he becomes part of the natives, learns their culture and falls in love with the local hottie. soon enough, he is faced with a dilemma: help his fellow humans obtain the unobtainium or fight with the na'vi to protect their homeland. (i like parentheses)

review: something i hate to admit is having watched titanic six times. three times in the theater, twice on home video and once on hbo. of those instances, only once was voluntary. anyways, james cameron's return to film has been touted as a game-changer and change the game it did. that game would be the 3d motion capture game which beowulf played well but lost. it was more in the gamut of pixar and dreamworks toons. avatar, on the other hand, well, as much as i like swimming against the tide, i am compelled to agree with the majority of moviegoers that this wasn't a movie. it was an experience.

but let's deal with the minuses first, shall we? (i'll pretend that you said "ok") the first gripe i had was on the voice-overs. it was quite unnecessary and i dont think its absence would have made a difference to the movie, er...the experience. half of the time, the protagonist was merely describing what was or what would be happening. i get that they're connected with the video logs (i am not gonna say "vlog" because i think it's stupid and gay) but the narrations were short and sparse and added nothing to the scenes. it would have been better if, like, when the colonel was talking to him while in the power-suit, he voice-overed "i should get these guys to do a dance in those suits and upload it to youtube lol". moving on, complaint number two: the near similar titanic storytelling. in titanic, the movie would switch from the ship scenes to the old woman recalling her memories. avatar employs the same switching from human mode to na'vi mode. i guess this is a gripe because i actually thought that jakesully (the protagonist) would get trapped in his na'vi body, hence more pandora sequences (more on that in next paragaph). anyways, the most criticized aspect of avatar is its flat, cliche story. the love story cliche. cliche evil guys after cliche treasure against cliche good guys. but (and now i swim on the opposite direction) it didnt bore me at all and i believe the simplicity helped propel the 3d experience forward by not delving on complicated subplots or overlong character developments. yes it wasnt original but it wasnt bad either. at least the drama didnt try hard too hard to jerk tears out of the audience.

now let's get to the meat of the matter, the cgi and the mocap technology. a few sentences back i mentioned the human mode na'vi mode switch. a large part of what makes it annoying is that i wanted to spend more time in pandora. dude, that place looks awesome. i came into the movie knowing that the na'vi and their environment are all computer generated and yet i could swear that those bushes, trees and animals (no aquatics though) were real. and james cameron has perfected the mocap because although the na'vi were obviously cgi, their movements and emotions looked very real. heck, even the long-noticeable mouth problems seem to have been fixed. it's all very amazing. the other thing that james cameron must have labored hours for was the science of the film. for one, pandora is kinda like a moon to a bigger planet so it would be natural for pandora to spend some time under the bigger planet's shadow and have longer evenings. and that is why most of the flora and fauna have luminescent abilities. they have evolved to survive the darkness. there is so much more to talk and ponder about the film, from the little details of the fingers (human-na'vi hybrids have five, real na'vi have four) to the nature-based "religion", which, to be completely honest, is one i would get behind if we had it here. but no review would encompass the true avatar experience. like jakesully in pandora, it's something jack into and see for yourself.

finalword: here is a film that pits humans against blue catpeople and you root for the catpeople. james cameron waited for the right time to realize his vision and the wait was all worth it because he has created an instant classic, this generation's bar-setter in visual effects. bravo, sir. and good luck, challengers!

the good: cgi, mocap, science

the bad: pace, narration

the ugly: the forced theme song

the verdict: 9 eywa jellyfish

abattoir.

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NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BATTLE OF THE SMITHSONIAN by obi

SPOILERS!!!

The spoiler...
Several years after the movie's part 1, Larry Daley hit it bigtime as a CEO of his own company leaving the nightguard post in the Museum of Natural History behind.

When the museum closed down for upgrades, some of the display artifacts are sent to the Smithsonian Institute archives in D.C. including the tablet of Ahkmenrah that which turns these objects to life. Triggered by the tablet, the Smithsonian displays are reanimated including the Egyptian pharaoh Kahmunrah and his unlikely allies Al Capone, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Ivan the Terrible.

The ragtag gang plans to rule the world by unsealing the gates to the underworld and summon forth a daemon army. But to accomplish this, Kahmunrah needs the tablet hieroglyphs deciphered! Larry, who breaks into the Smithsonian archives as soon as he is contacted by Jed the miniature cowboy for help, seems to be the pharaoh's only hope to break the code. With his reanimated friends being harassed by the bad guys, Larry had no choice but to work on the tablet, meeting new museum personalities as he go through it.

All the while, Larry's friends from the Museum of Natural History are brewing a daring attempt to get rid of Kahmunrah. They are able to do it in time as the pharaoh has just opened the gates to the underworld... Abe Lincoln's monument swathing daemons back to the netherworld!

With Kahmunrah gone, everything returned to normal in the Smithsonian. Larry brings back his friends to the Museum of Natural History and had it open 24 hours where every past midnight, patrons may walk with the reanimated museum artifacts.

The verdict...
It comes as a surprise to me that I enjoyed this film more than its prequel! And surprising even more is that it's not all about Ben Stiller's performance. He even hardly carry most of the fun stock of the story. I watched this movie expecting to see something entertaining yet won't require me to think too much deeply AND it did not fail me. It was good brainless fun! A must-see for a family outing.

The GOOD...
The new museum characters are a laugh trip... Kahmunrah has a comical lisp, Bonaparte squeals like a chick, and Al Capone and his honchos are in black and white! Even General Custer and the new capuchin monkey have their share of hilarious antics. The old museum characters are still kickin' fun as well. I particularly liked this scene where the miniature Octavius attempted to charge across an expansive lawn, tiring himself for naught (melodramatic and all!).

The entire production is just right. Costume and set design fit what needs to be depicted in the story. Computer graphic works is really creative and done flawlessly.

The SO SO...
Ben Stiller. I think he can't pull off a better-than-average presence in the film. I don't know if its because his script is lackluster or everybody else just outshines him! His female counterpart Amy Adams (Amelia Earhart) is a poor attempt at throwing in a romantic twist. She's exaggeratedly perky for me.

The BAD...
The story is not really impressive. It's developed just for the sake of having a plot to pour the comedy into. So with that, don't expect much depth on it or wish on having lose ends tied up. It's a fantasy story. Things happen, rationally or not. To add to that, the story ending is rushed.

Robin Williams is cheesy.

The rating...
7 of 10.

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ANGELS & DEMONS by obi

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

The gist...
The symbologist Dr. Robert Langdon has been called by the Vatican to solve a threat by the church's long-dormant nemesis - the Illuminati.

The situation is this:
* The Pope is dead.
* The Conclave of Cardinals is in session for Papal election.
* Four of the top candidates - the preferatti - are kidnapped by the Illuminati.
* A bomb threat is up in the Vatican... a powerful bomb that can wipeout the entire city-state.

The Illuminati will start to murder the kidnapped Cardinals one by one before midnight - the time the bomb is set to detonate. Langdon, starting with a clue from a Galilean book, follows the trail of the culprit around the walled city as the latter sets to accomplish his murder spree. Three dead Cardinals after, the symbologist still hops around the Vatican in a race to make sense with everything that is happening.

As Langdon closes in on the murderer, events unfold that leads to the discovery of the people behind the plot. On a dramatic climax, he saves the last Cardinal and exposes (in a sorry way of tying lose ends) everything that the viewers need to know.

The verdict...
What's outright striking about the movie is the overall aesthetics of the sets and locations. As if on a tour bus racing around the Vatican, the scenes switch from one landmark to another... as quick as the fast paced movie can showcase in two hours. Great cinematography!

The story is a lame excuse for a mystery flick. The development of the conflict is progressive only up to the point where Langdon flew to the Vatican and started nosing around. By the time clues started raining down on the symbologist, all went in a confused flurry of lame riddles and chasing around the Vatican and boring action scenes. I can imagine a more interesting Hardy Boys plot line.

What sparked a bit of interest for me is the same reason why I enjoyed "Da Vinci Code" - the way Robert Brown interlaced facts and fiction and make it seem to have an appearance of plausibility. I love the concept of the Illuminati and the personalities Brown affiliated with it... Galileo, Bernini, Michaelangelo, and Raphael Santi. He could have used the mystery of this clandestine group for a deeper plot line than just being a mask of the Carmelengo's deeds.

I haven't read the book so I can't tell if it was adapted in the movie well. But I have a big hunch it did not.

The acting is cool. The cast is cool. The script lame. Langdon is a walking curator! I mean 80% of the film, he's wise-talking and annotating every single Encyclopedia entry they pass through along the story. Again, I don't know if that's how Langdon's character is supposed to be since I quite remember a different Langdon from the "Da Vinci Code". And I don't mind it either... it's educational! It's just that there are a lot more creative ways of presenting information to readers than directly spoon-feeding.

In all, don't take the story too seriously or prepare to be disappointed. It may appear to have depth in the start but as Langdon starts to crack through the mystery, you'll have this notion that the story is more of an elementary detective novel than a CSI-ish episode.

6 of 10.

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ANGELS & DEMONS by jaiskizzy

apercu: the pope dies and just as the vatican dudes are about to choose the next one, an enemy from the past, the illuminati, abducts the candidates and hides an antimatter bomb somewhere in the holy city set to go off at midnight and delete the world's smallest country from google earth. with no pope and no hope, they turn to a swimming tom hanks for help, who thankfully doesnt stay in his trunks for the rest of the movie.

the da vinci code was bad. you would expect that all those bad reviews of that movie would immensely affect the plans for the sequel and make the planners double their efforts to produce a better film. but i guess they just didnt care and went ahead with shooting tom hanks snap into lectures about history in the same annoying way the paperclip pops up in microsoft office and uncover the dumbest mystery ever by following clues that are so dumb the perpetrators could have just left those sticker footprints you find in malls and it wouldn't have made a difference. seriously, there are way better scooby-doo and 1960s batman vs. riddler episodes than this movie. here is a rough example of the audience brain cell murdering of angels and demons: tom hanks and the gang arrive at the scene. they look for an angel sculpture. it has to be an angel for reasons i didnt pay attention to. they find the statue. it's pointing to somewhere. west, i think. they look at a map for churches in the west for the next clue. there it is. a church with an italian name that in english means castle of angels. ayfkm?!? (are you fucking kidding me question mark exclamation point question mark)

the dialogue was quite terrible. there were attempts at humor but failed. the action scenes didnt get any reaction from me. the ending was unsurprising because, with such a small of well-knowns, you know it had to be one of them. i cant wait for a movie where the one behind all the evildoings was an extra who was always somewhere in the background. the only aspect of the film that was watchable was obi-wan, as my beloved jeej refers to him. to me, ewan mcgregor will always be mark renton and it's pretty amazing that the same guy who dived into a toilet to retrieve suppositories just to get a fix is a priest in this movie. when he did the speech with the cardinals, i was expecting him to seque into the choose life monolgue.

don't know about the book but this movie ought to be condemned for its sin of crappiness. for the lost souls out to find cinematic pleasure, allow me to spread the word: thou shalt not waste thy moolah on this. if there is a hell, it could probably be looped screenings of this movie.

the good: the science versus religion thing and the ewan mcgregor thing.
the bad: the every thing else.
the ugly: tom hanks' "facial"
the verdict: 4 smoking cardinals



the illuminaughty.
or
angers and dream-ons

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STAR TREK by obi

SPOILERS AHEAD!

The gist...
A humongous Romulan starship got sucked back in from the future. Bent on avenging the destruction of his homeworld, its Captain (Nero) initiated a blackhole in the core of planet Vulcan to decimate the planet from within!

Out to investigate the catastrophe, an armada of Starfleet cruisers are sent to Vulcan. All these cruisers are decimated by the Romulans in a cunning ambush bar one - the "Enterprise". James Kirk, who is just stowed aboard the infamous starship, predicted this attack and is able to forwarn the Captain about it. In a daring attempt to negotiate with the Romulans, Captain Pike of the "Enterprise" appointed First Officer Spock as temporary Captain and the braggart Kirk as substitute First Officer while he dared to ferry himself into the Romulan spacecraft.

Captain Pike is eventually held captive by Nero. Outgunned and outsized by the Romulan ship, Spock take the logical choice to retreat and redezvous with the Starfleet. Kirk forcefully opposed the idea (wanting to outright follow and attack the escaping Romulans) which eventually made the Vulcan Captain eject him out of the "Enterprise" and into a nearby ice planet.

There, Kirk meet an older Spock (also from the future), who showed him to an onplanet Starfleet outpost and meet Montgomery Scott. Scott devised a gadget that beamed them back to "Enterprise". Aided by insights from the old Spock, Kirk tricked the present-time Spock into relinquishing his command of the cruiser and appointed himself the new Captain. With this new post, he executed his original plan to chase the Romulan ship and, in a foolhardily heroic plan, is able to beam inside the enemy vessel!

Being the good guys they are (good guys are just... y'know... good!), the plan went off well and the "Enterprise" are able to get rid of the Romulan ship and rescue Captain Pike. For this bravery, Kirk becomes permanent Captain of the "Enterprise" and the rest is let us say a joyride for the Trekkie fandom.

The verdict...
I'm no Trekkie but the film impressed me. I can only vaguely remember the original series but I guess this worked as an advantage for my enjoyment of the movie. It feels all new to me aside from the ship and the crew!

The CGI is a visual treat! Flawless and sleek, it effectively made the movie a must-see in the big screen. The sets are creatively designed and although they have touches reminiscent of the old Star Trek settings, most are fused and interspersed with props and materials that are of original concept. I particularly liked the "inside" of the Romulan ship, keeping the idea that it should look ahead of technology (as it's supposed to be from the future) while portraying the cabalistic nature of the crew.

The opening part of the movie can be quite confusing as it's not outright implied that the plot would involve an alternate universe and a time travel. Aside from that, the screenplay is generally mediocre with plot lines that are, if not totally briliant, just enough to bolster what the rest of the movie has to boast. As long as it's not outright dumb to waste such a good production, I'm good with it.

The assemblage of casts to portray the much-loved crew of "Enterprise" is well-done. Chris Pine (Captain James Kirk) nailed the William Shatner portrayal of the Don Juan chief of the starship and added little touches of his own device. Zachary Quinto's Spock (the younger one) is very very convincing as somebody torn between his emotionless and logical Vulcan nature and his sentimental Earthling half. John Cho's character Sulu is really vague on my recollections but I've always remembered him as a kick-ass fencer. It's kinda portrayed in the film as he duelled with a sword against a Romulan. So so acting. Anton Yelchin (Chekov) doesn't have to do much but talk in his annoying accent. Simon Pegg (Scotty) and Karl Urban (Bones) have really likeable characters while Zoe Saldana (Uhura) blew her's. She's obviously just trying. Eric Bana's Romulan captain Nero is a strong performance.

Salute goes to Leonard Nimoy (the original Spock) for reprising his role. He doesn't have to do much anyway but act as a more laid-back Spock than the one he used to play. Should not be hard for an aging man.

Action scenes are packed good along the story. I like how the space fights are designed. None too grandiose as Star Wars' but just excellently crafted to be visually impressive. I don't like the Uhura-Spock romance. It seems like a poor attempt at putting it just for the sake of having a love angle in there.

To sum it, the director has been bold enough to fuse some new concepts into the old premise of Star Trek and still pull it off well.

9 of 10!

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X-MEN ORIGINIS: WOLVERINE by obi

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The spoiler...
Logan and his brother Victor served the American army formidably and this is mainly because of their innate mutant abilities. Along the way, they met Colonel Stryker, an ambitious officer who assembled a team of mutants (and conscripting the brothers in it) that acted as a Special Force for the military. After a while, the team's differences took toll and they separated to live their own civilian lives.

Logan went a simple living on the mountains of Canada with his wife. One day, Victor returned and claimed the life of his beloved. Wanting to kill Victor for revenge, he agreed to Colonel Stryker's experiment to infuse adamantium to his bones rendering him almost indestructible. Tagged as Weapon X by Stryker's experiment, Logan opted to rather be called as Wolverine (taken from one of his wife's tales). He learned that Stryker wanted something else out of the experiment and tried to erase his memories. Wolverine escaped the facility and along the way learned that Stryker himself is in league with Victor.

The two are involved in kidnapping mutants and conducting experiements with them on a secluded facility called the "Island".

Wolverine went out to search for this facility and after arriving on it, new revelations has been revealed - his wife is not dead and is only blackmailed to cooperate with Stryker to save the life of her sister who is under the Colonel's captivity. Freeing the captive mutants, Wolverine (with Victor helping out) eventually has to battle with Weapon XI, the last and best mutant warrior Stryker's experiments have produced.

They are able to defeat Weapon XI and destroy the facility. The captive mutants are saved by a cameo appearance of Professor X. Wolverine however was shot by Stryker in the head with an adamantium bullet. The wounds healed but the damage in his brain made him forgot everything. Stryker was arrested by the military and rest is... well... X-Men history.

The verdict...
I've always liked Wolverine and I have to agree that Hugh Jackman (though out of scale to the original Wolverine who should only be 5'3 feet in height) is one of the best choice to grab the role. He looks like Logan and acts the role well.

It's cool that I'm familiar with most of the mutants on the film and like a fanboy I go "Oooh, I know him/her!" in my mind when a mutant appeared along the story. Some are not outright recognizable but there are enough hints to know who's who. Some of the most prominent characters are the Blob, Sabretooth (Victor), a young Cyclops, Deadpool (one of my favorites in Marvel), Emma Frost, and Gambit. It's disappointing that Gambit has been shown a lot of times in the movie's preview but doesn't play that much role in the movie itself.

There are obvious deviance from the canon story as read in the Marvel comicbooks but I believe that they are made in good spirit of TRYING to come up with an interesting story. This made the film also fairly acceptable to people who don't know crap about Wolverine and the rest of the Marvel mutants in print. The storyline is typical of comicbook adaptations where lose ends fly aplenty and impossibilities are only limited by the scriptwriters' ingenuity to make things happen. It's a leave-brain-at-home screenplay.

Actually, the movie can be boring, really, if you'll not be dazzled by the more-than-enough action scenes it packs. Some time along the movie you'll realize that mutant characters come and go like they just want to throw in as much mutants as possible even if they don't really help much on progressing the story. I can go as far as saying that there's not enough "flash" on the film (which should be expected on sci-fi flicks like this). Computer effects is horrible as some of the green screen scenes and digital edits are obvious. They've provided subtle fan services to the really hardcore Wolverine fans but it won't change the impact to people who would look for value for what they paid.

In all, it's your generic superhero flick. Nothing innovative is introduced in it except the fact that you'll learn that Wolverine's name actually originated from a who-knows-what-language word that sounds like "koo-koo kachoo!" Haha... laughtrip!

4 out of 10.

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DETROIT METAL CITY by jaiskizzy

the gist: a wussy wimpy country boy leaves home to go to tokyo to (too many to's?) fulfill his dream of becoming a "fashionable musician" but busking with his acoustic guitar and his sissy songs gets him nowhere past having a street dog as a fan. however, he is, in fact, secretly and reluctantly, johannes krauser ii, the made-up lead vocalist/guitarist of detroit metal city, an independent death metal band that is fast becoming the biggest act in japan, with hordes of fans believing he is indeed a demon from hell who raped and killed his parents. and so... will negishi ever get to embrace his pop dream and lose his virginity to that chick with cute underwear?

the reaction: so you'd know where im coming from, ive never read the manga or watched the anime. im sure they're great (most manga that become anime then become live action are exceptionally good anyways) but my kudos descend upon the movie and the people involved in it. the japanese have yet to crappify my eyes. detroit metal city is breathlessly fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfucking awesome. from the great story mirroring the dichotomy of life to the songs that actually sounded like the real deal, there's no denying that the cast and crew sacrificed their blood and soul to get the movie off the ground and go sky high. exaggeration but hyperboles aren't uncalled for when talking about movies like this. it's very entertaining and it made me laugh many times. there was a movie called detroit rock city, also the title of a kiss song, about a kiss cover band trying to get into a kiss concert. now, there's detroit metal city and they even bagged gene simmons (the dude with the long tongue in kiss) to play jack il dark! how cool is that?!

the humongous round of devil horns raised way up in the air goes to kenichi whatshisname. after doing the mysterious coolness that is L in death note, he does an acting 180 as the stupid-looking, soft-mannered, almost gay negishi. seriously, this guy has some balls to accept such a role where he would have to make an ass of himself, singing with his knees stuck together, running like a girl, not to mention wearing that horrendous haircut. sure he gets to portray the death metal demon krauser but negishi is something a normal actor would probably regret including in his resume. unlike death note's raito yagami who was also shuya in battle royale, the actor playing him looks and feels pretty much the same. here, there is literally no sign of L in kenichi. and even though ive seen pics and clips of the movie before watching, i never even realized that he was both negishi and krauser. now that is talent. no pretty boy pinoy actor can disappear in roles like that. plus, he did his own singing for both characters, which required two separate voice actors for the anime. take that, retard gutierrez!

if you love metal, if you love japanese films, heck if you just watch for ideas on your next cosplay, give this movie a chance and detroit metal city will melt your face. if not, you should form a band with your tambourine and call it tetrapot melon tea. as for kenichi somethingsomething, kamui gaiden is up next. yes, sir.


the good: that L guy. his dual performance carries the whole film
the bad: the slightly ridiculous ending. metal buffalo?!
the ugly: penis haircut.
the verdict: 8 chocorape cakes!


jai il dork

or

destroyed mental skizzy.

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WATCHMEN by jaiskizzy

the gist: in alternate 80s america, where once-heralded costumed crimefighters have been outlawed by the government and a globally destructive nuclear war with russia is imminent, a retired superhero known as the comedian is found dead on the street more than a hundred feet below his high-rise apartment, killed by gravity. a former teammate, rorschach, embarks on his own investigation to find the murderer who seems to be particularly offing masked members of the society. old friends are reunited, memories are remembered and walls are repainted (with blood) as the doomsday clock ticks closer to the end of the world.

the review: fuck the long intros. i'll do my best to make this short and quick because the less is said, the better. i liked the movie. given that the graphic novel has been deemed unfilmable for so long and the weird and cool alan moore refuses credit for any adaptation, zack snyder has done quite an achievement. and not only by squeezing a 12-chapter story into a 3-hour movie. you see, there's a dvd out there where they animated the comic book panels and turned it into sort of an audiobooky (because one guy does all the voices, even the female characters) cartoon, reminiscent of the old marvel superhero 2d shows. compared to that, with real actors and actual sets, zack snyder's film is a couple of steps ahead in awesomeness.

yes, the paper version is still way better but the celluloid translation turns it into an entirely new experience. you now hear the voices that uttered those great lines, especially dr. manhattan's which was totally unexpected. (you'd think he would have the mighty otherworldly voice of james earl jones with a sore throat on volume 11 plus extra echo and not mild and boring like my history teacher's in high school. but it works amazingly.) you see them break through the frozen panels and move, sometimes in slow-mo, the constantly morphing inkblot on rorschach's mask alone, the origin of which didnt make it past the cutting room floor, was mesmerizing. i like how the costumes were almost exactly the same, down to the minutemen despite not having that much screen time. i smiled when silk spectre 2's costume was unzipped, not because she was about to get naked, but because it had a zipper, something we rarely see in superhero movies. that zipper contributed to grounding the whole thing in reality.

i never thought that stillwater's lead guitarist would pass off as a god with blue skin who doesn't really give a shit about humans and would effectively portray how the seemingly emotionless character eventually learns to (there is a real smiley face crater in mars btw). but the invisible badass acting award goes to jackie earle haley, the masturbating date in little children. this guy is great. unlike doc, his vocal characterization of rorschach is exactly the way i imagined it in my head. the two moments he screams like a madman were very powerful. perfect segue to my main gripe at the movie: the other actors didnt really do much and acted like they were still two-dimensional drawings. anyways, having read the graphic novel before watching the movie isn't a requirement. it doesn't even assure one would enjoy the film more. if you're the kind of moviegoer who just sits there depending on visuals, expecting rollercoaster ride-type of action, you will be heavily disappointed. watchmen is character-driven and story-driven and, for lack of a better symbolism, it is the kind of film that my father sleeps on. i think my father would be snoring on the theater seat around the time the bob dylan-sung opening credits is over and rorschach begins talking to himself.

though this review is probably a couple of paragraphs short of being a novel itself, there is still so much to be said about the film, a lot of which is open for debate between those who have read the graphic novel and the poor people who havent. it is not the greatest comic book movie ever made (tdk, imho), but it is a feat of filmmaking nonetheless. the movie has brains and balls. i will watch watchmen again.

the good: faithfulness to source material, necessary changes
the bad: bland acting
the ugly: too many cocks.
the verdict: 9 blood-stained smiley face pins


watchamacallboy.

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VALKYRIE by obi

Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert!

Based on actual historical events, "Valkyrie" followed the life of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg from being withdrawn from the German African Front to eventually involving himself on an intricate plot to asassinate the Fuhrer himself, Adolf Hitler, in Germany.

Fresh from injuries sustained on the African battlefield, Stauffenberg is introduced to an underground resistance of high ranking officers and politicians. Their aim: to kill Hitler and propose a peace treaty with the Allies, thus ending the war. In order to machinate the coup, the dissenters rewrite Operation Valkyrie - a protocol that enables the Reserve Army to take over Germany in case of Hitler's death. The resistance omitted the clause that gives the pro-Nazi SS (German special security force) that same privelege, thus the sole control of Germany in case of the Fuhrer's death goes to the head of the Reserve Army, General Fromm.

Stauffenberg got the revised Operation Valkyrie signed by Hitler and in a continued effort by the conspirators, they devise a plan for another asassination attempt. Stauffenberg himself and his adjutant Lieutenant Haeften execute it by planting a bomb on one of Hitler's staff meeting in the Prussian military HQ - Wolf's Lair.

They rig the bomb inside the staff meeting and quickly return to Berlin. Together with the resistance, they force General Fromm to execute Operation Valkyrie believing that Hitler died from the bombing. Fortunately (or rather unfortunately), the Nazi dictator survive the attempt when the bag containing the bomb is moved away from where it will be fatal to the Fuhrer. And just as Stauffenberg and the rest of the conspirators mobilize to occupy Germany, Hitler with help from his trusted SS officers consolidate power and eventually root out the dissenters.

All are either executed or have committed suicide. Colonel Stauffenberg died from firing squad the same night their underground group fail the coup.

The verdict...
The director did a good job of presenting the failed July 20 plot to kill Hitler in a way that it will be moving not only for World War 2 buffs but also to regular Joe viewers. The storyline, although mostly based on factual occurences, has been written to accommodate bits of fiction just enough to make it dramatic.

The production design did a great deal of research. From costumes to props to the actual locations, the film relives that era where the Nazi is at its height of power and makes you visualize how Germany looks like back then. It was as if you're looking at a 1950's movie setting, only not in black and white.

Of course, a posing problem of the film (and also on most Americanized foreign movies) is that characters converse in English. Obviously, expressions and intonations differ a lot between German and English and it may be off-putting for a German to see how lines are delivered or acted out awkwardly. But personally, it should be so trivial to matter if you won't be too anal about it. C'mon, you're probably not a German anyway to care.

Funny thing is that when I checked out the net for photos of the real personalities behind the conspiracy, almost all look like the actors that played them in the movie. Adolf Hitler himself looks really similar to the actor who played his persona (David Bamber). On the top of my list though is Bill Nighy who resembled General Olbricht strikingly accurate. Try to search a photo of the real General Olbricht on the net and compare it with Bill Nighy's depiction so you'll see what I'm talking about.

Great acting. Great production. Great storyline. This movie has the making of a classic if not for Tom Cruise himself. I can't figure out what's wrong with his acting in the film but he seems really out of place among stellar performances by his supporting casts... Terence Stamp (as Ludwig Beck) and Christian Berkel (as Colonel Quirnheim) first come to my mind.

Aside from that, it's totally an experience to watch the movie and worth watching on a good cinema. Know about the later part of the Nazi Germany era on a non-boring way.

8.5 of 10.

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PUSH by obi

Watched this film with the "Stoners" and our guest from Sydney. I can't believe we picked this over "Valkyrie".

Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert! Spoiler Alert!

First, there's the Division - a top secret American bureau of power-wielding individuals. Kira – a “pusher” (she can put thoughts inside people’s minds) – escapes the Division and steals the key to their super serum project. She sneaks herself to Hong Kong where the rest of the story drags on… literally.

In comes Cassie (Dakota Fanning), a “watcher” (a clairvoyant), and her predestined bodyguard Nick (Chris Evans), a “mover” (he’s got telekinesis). According to the latter’s foretelling drawings, they need to look for the serum – and thus look for Kira too – to bring down the Division. When they finally get together, the group seeks aid from other gifted allies as they find out that a Chinese crime ring (led by people with super powers too) is also out lose to find the serum.

In an exaggeratedly brilliant maneuver, Nick devises a plan that throws off both the Division and the Chinese gangster, leading to the demise of the groups’ top dogs and the recovery of the coveted item.

The verdict…
It’s a classic example of an “it could have been better” film.

The production (settings, effects, editing and all) is above average. I’m all praises for the cinematography as they did a good job capturing the hubbub of Hong Kong’s busy districts and present it in a grungy yet still artsy kind of way. This is complemented well by the film’s musical scoring. Nice pick of tracks.

The effects are not outright awesome but are not sloppy either. I like the idea of hovering pistols and another “mover” Victor deflecting bullets with telekinetic barriers. The ripples created around deflected bullets are almost negligible but its addition is an eye-fancy.

Having said these, the down side of the movie is not on its more apparent parts but rather on the slow pacing of the story itself. In such steady pace, usually the characters or the plot get too overdeveloped but in “Push” it’s not. For me, the character development is even not enough. So what’s left in between to fill the prolonged scenes is dragging dialogues and trivial info-feeding.

The concept is actually good no matter how you can relate some aspects of it to some of the latest superhero flicks. Some superhuman abilities are presented in interesting ways like when “pushers” dilate eyes when they shove thoughts in the mind of others or how “shifters” metamorphose things in a whim. The world created by the film itself should be creative enough to be able to play around with a good screenplay but here’s where they fail big time.

While the film slowly creeps towards the climax, the resolution is rushed and unimaginative. Nick’s “genius” plans impossibly snapped right into place and most are obviously forced into happening. One specific scene that made me want to walk out of the cinema is when a henchman crashes on top of a car where Nick is locked up, wrecking its chassis and freeing him out of it. I’m usually forgiving when “luck” is in line with providential happenings on movies but sorry I just can’t stomach to buy this lack of creativity.

The casts are so so. Dakota Fanning (Cassie) is uncharacteristically dull. I particularly don’t dig how she acted when she was supposed to be drunk. She looks more like drugged than drunk. See the difference? Camille Belle (Kira) is cool. Chris Evans (Nick) is so so. Djimon Hounsou (Agent Carver) is convincing as a bad guy. Neil Jackson (Victor) is underexposed when his character rocks and more interesting than the Chinese gangster’s female “watcher”. The Chinese gangster’s pair of male banshees is hilarious but I must admit that the movie is able to pull off depicting a sonic blast.

All in all, it had been just a typical hero flick movie when it could have the materials to come up with something worthy of a good following. The lose ends (lots of them) will definitely need a sequel but I hope its screenplay will not be as crappy.

Four of Ten.

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HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE by jaiskizzy

the gist: shaun from shaun of the dead is now a british magazine editor who gets kicked out of celebrity parties a lot. the dude suddenly calls him up and hires him to be a writer for sharps, a better established publication based in new york. he penetrates america, the magazine, the world of hollywood and desperately wants to do the same to that hot chick from transformers. along with mary jane watson and dana scully, whose ass will he eventually kiss?

this film hits close because i, too, have had the bittersweet experience of working for a magazine. like simon pegg's character, sidney young, i went in ready to shake things up, to introduce fresh blood-ink to the pages. sure i got the chance to do my real passion and get paid for it but it never said in the contract that i had to deal with assholes and complete morons every day. so, i quit that shit and lived to tell the tale. the same cannot be said for sidney. after realizing that his(our) non-conformist attitude was getting him nowhere, he shrugged everything off and wrote the article that was forced upon him. the result: instant success. exclusive party invites, bumping bums with celebrities, even seeing the demise of his enemies. it's great because that's how things are in real life. the easiest way to the top is through someone else's bottom. still, if the only road to fulfilling your dreams is by taking shit from other people, then it's a triumph from shit and nothing to be proud of. but that's just me and my preachy intro.

anyways, as expected, simon pegg was hilarious. liked him in shaun and the bit part he did in missin:impossible 3. here, even with americanized humor, he made the role believably funny with his unlimited supply of witty quips and punchlines. his reactive facial expressions bury the pinoy comedy movie "nye!" and "acheche!" deeper in the corny cemetery. now, jeff bridges. there's a guy we havent seen for a while. after being the bald obadiah stane, it's good to see the dude back in long hair sans the 'stache and beard. his role was small but big, if you catch my drift.

i never understood why kirsten dunst was cast as mary jane in the spider-man movies. peter and harry fight over this snaggletoothed chick? anyways so i really dont get how she bags these "female-character-that-the-main-male-character-goes-nuts-for" roles. she's not attractive at all. like if i was watching flies congregating on dog poo and she walked by naked sucking on a lollipop and twirling pigtailed hair, i wouldnt bother to look. i mean, if it was me who had to choose between her and megan fox, the choice would be pretty obvious. i would definitely, no questions asked, automatically pick my girlfriend over these celebrity bitches. i love you, love.

so...

i liked the story, how it began, how it progressed, but hated how it concluded. i wished it not to go where i expected it to go, but it did and that's where the film failed me. i dont know if the book that this was based on had the same ending but it's the ending of almost about every chick flick that kept tissue manufacturers in business. oh, well... that's why it's called mainstream.


the good: the story and the simon pegg.
the bad: cliche love story ending.
the ugly: the penis.
the verdict: 7 strips of tape on the face.


skizzy old.

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