Film is Pwn

Being a father there are certain things I have learned to accept: 2AM feedings, changing diapers, potty training, etc… but this weekend I experienced something that I don’t think I will ever be able to come to terms with – Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.  Perhaps I have been spoiled by children’s films such as Up and Wall-E which are not only aimed at children, but well written and well executed.  Chipmunks was neither. (more…)

I finally got around to watching the latest Pixar movie Up — recently released on DVD — this weekend, and while it’s tough to argue that Pixar movies are consistently excellent (Finding Nemo, Wall-E, The Incredibles, etc.) I wasn’t in a big rush to check out Up.  The film is and was advertised as the adventures of a grumpy old man and a chubby boy scout in a house sent airborne by a gaggle of balloons.  Interesting, sure, but when the choice between Up and The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 came, I opted with the pretty good Denzel Washington thriller.

In retrospect and with respect to Pelham 1-2-3, I made the wrong choice. Up is terrific, thoroughly entertaining and with a great heart. My knee-jerk reaction is that I prefer Up over Wall-E and Finding Nemo, great films both.

The talking dog named Dug cracked me up every time he spoke with perfectly annunciated cadence to great dialogue translated to humanese, “I will stop the dogs! . . .  Stop you dogs!” and “I have just met you, and I love you.” (more…)

Lord, Save Us From Your Followers  is documentary that takes a humorous swipe at the divisive political and social perception of Christianity and God in general.  The film isn’t a salvo in the culture wars by any stretch of the imagination; rather it is an exploration as to why there is a culture war, if there is a culture war, and why “the Gospel of Love” has become such a contentious topic.  One of the critic quotations used in the trailer hits the nail on the head: “A peace offering, not a battlecry.”  I know, it’s not protocol to site other film reviews in your film review, but Film Is Pwn possesses no standard operating procedure, so let’s move on to some new quotes, shall we? (more…)

I don’t feel that I am going out on any manner of limb by stating that Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is the best, pre-Christopher Nolan Batman movie ever made.  I mean no slight to the fine work of Tim Burton, who created the cash cow (cash bat?) with two good, crowd-pleasers, that forever proved that Batman was not doomed to be known as the domain of Adam West and his campy comedy of the 1960s. 

Yet it is worth noting that in the benefit of hindsight, the pair of Burton Batman outings, Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) pale in comparison to the later works featuring Christian Bale as the titular caped crusader and helmed by the aforementioned Nolan.  Niceties aside, I prefer the aesthetically pleasing, easily accessible animated film, Mask of the Phantasm to the Burton films.  (Note how I, like any right thinking film lover, omit any mention of the disastrous Joel Schumacher films Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.)

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You know, I’d like to watch “clean” movies more, I really would.  I am, after all, a clean guy – I don’t cuss, I don’t drink, I never did drugs, I don’t sleep around, I shower nearly every day (often with soap), and I have never give someone a roundhouse kick if I happen to disagree with them.  And yet those very qualities (promiscuous, profanity, substance abuse, unnecessary spin-kickery) permeate the movies I opt to write about here, with occasional interludes like my blog on The Country Bears, for example.

You wanna know why? I’ll tell you why: Outside Pixar, most “G” rated stuff is crap like Space Buddies.

Now, there’s nothing “wrong” with a film like Space Buddies, where the target audience thinks that talking, wise-cracking dogs getting into various misadventures is inherently entertaining.  In fairness, the target audience is not yet potty trained and can generally be amused by a hearty game of “peek-a-boo” for the full running time of Space Buddies.  If not for the fact that prolonged “peek-a-booing” can tire out parents and their wrists, I assume there would never be a need to purloin a copy of Space Buddies and pop it in the DVD player in order to entertain the little ones. (more…)

Krull is a very odd yet somehow entertaining fantasy adventure film that combines elements of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. The more I think about it, if they had made a live action Lord of the Rings in the early 80s, I fear it would have looked like this: cheesy effects that Flash Gordon would scoff at, cheap sets imported from the Lost in Space TV show, and an uninspired cast that thinks they’re making children’s theater (in fairness, they’re not entirely mistaken).

The story is of a far off world known as Krull, a place steeped with mystical forests, cyclops, and magic. Typical of mystical worlds too cheap to call Orkin, Krull is besieged by otherworldly creatures known as Slayers, who could be distant cousins to Orcs. The Slayers answer to a shapeshifting, all-powerful monster who could not conceivably be defeated until maybe the climactic scene, and they have no clear purpose outside generic conquest.

Krull’s two rival kingdoms of men must unite to fight off the invaders, and for some reason doing so requires the son and daughter of the kings have to get married to seal the deal. Yes, if you want to solve infighting, marriage is the sure way to guarantee there will never be another fight again. “The threat of annihilation by alien invaders has been insuffient to unite us, but being In-laws should do the trick!” I’m a bachelor, and even I know that’s relatively unrealistic, if not flippin’ stupid. (more…)

This is another film that I stumbled over on the MGM-HD channel, and let me just say, Brenda Starr might just be the dumbest movie I’ve reviewed yet for Film Is Pwn, which says a lot coming off of a little film I like to call Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.  This is not “you-can-see-the-monster’s-zipper” stupidity or “the-digital-monsters-look-cheaper-than-the-Trix-rabbit” terrible, Brenda Starr is buffoonery at the plot level, idiotic from its very conception.

Brenda Starr is based on a long-running comic strip of the same name that I vaguely remember seeing many moons ago, when I actually got a newspaper and would turn to the funny pages for Calvin & Hobbes.  I assume a lot of the film is intended to by a Adam-West-era-Batman-style-camp affair, but it’s so painfully unfunny it can only be enjoyed as an object of ridicule and scorn.  A 20-year-old Brooke Shields plays Brenda Starr, and at this point of Brooke’s career as an actress . . . she’s a beautiful woman.  We’ll leave it at that.
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This is the second random movie I picked up at a mall dollar store on a lark, the first being Casper “the Friendly” Van Dien in Thrill Seekers.  This is High Risk, an early 80s film that features a lot of familiar actors in a fast paced film with a mixture of mild adventure, tepid action, and unfunny comedy.

The basic premise is four average Joe types get enough of a bad economy, layoffs, and welfare and turn to a life of crime.  Please don’t get any ideas people.  This taking place in the Carter administration, with oil embargoes, national malaise, and inflation out the wazoo, it is understandable.  “Inflation,” in fact, is mentioned twice during the movie, setting the record for inflation discussion in an adventure film taking place in the jungle previously held by Milton Friedman’s long forgotten Tarzan> remake.

The four chumps turned criminal are played by James Brolin (future Mr. Barbara Streisand), Cleavon Little (star of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles), Bruce Davison (future “it’s that guy!” who would go on to have supporting roles in just about every movie and TV show in the last 20 years), and Chuck Vennera.  Who is Chuck Vennera, you ask?  Well, he’s the only unfamiliar face to me with a big role, so I checked him out on imdb.com, and his most distinctive credits after High Risk have been voicing Johnny T. Rex on Darkwing Duck, playing a character named “Johnny” on the sitcom Mad About You, playing “Johnny Roman” on L.A. Heat, and providing multiple voices on the Read Adventures of Jonny Quest.  I guess when Hollywood pigeonholes you as a “Jo(h)nny,” those are the only parts you can get . . . (more…)

Riddle me this, Batman: What do you get when you cross me and a $1 dvd bin at a local dollar store?  You get the 1999, made-for-cable, Casper Van Dien lost “classic” Thrill Seekers!!!!

Having just witnessed the film and staring at the DVD case, I must take issue with the false advertising.  The cover, featuring a picture of Casper Van Dien looking slightly concerned as he talks on the phone, promises that Thrill Seekers is “YOUR PASSPORT TO DANGER,” and this is patently untrue.  The entirety of the story takes place in the confines of the United States, mostly Chicago, so no passport is needed.  Unless of course they are referring to the fact the film was actually filmed in Canada standing in for America, and in that case you would need your passport.  Or, it is equally likely that the DVD was intended for a foreign audience, and Thrill Seekers would qualify as a “Passport to Danger” if you were watching in North Korea, though I suspect their citizenry need no passport to experience danger.  Though, now that I think on this topic even further, it is entirely possible the marketing department wishes us to consider “Danger” a tangible destination outside the borders of the USA, and thereby Danger’s border patrol agents would require passports to enable us to enter.  I find this the most plausible explanation for the tagline, and I certainly hope President Obama will declare me America’s Ambassador to Danger, so if I get in too much trouble while representing the U.S.A. while in Danger I can always claim diplomatic immunity. (more…)

What does one say for a comedy that is not funny?   I for one can think of nothing.

It should be noted that the Great Buck Howard, the film in question today, is not just a dry comedy, it also strives to achieve a degree of poignancy and sentimentality, with a tinge of romance on the side.  Regardless the scale or the measurement, The Great Buck Howard fails the test by my estimation, I regret to report.  The Great Buck Howard is an curiosity at best, a waste of time at least, and a drag throughout.
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There are some movies I feel that I should like even though I’ve seen them and know for a fact I did not really enjoy that movie the first time.  One such film is the Phantom, starring Billy “It’s a Walk-Off!” Zane, in his one serious brush with being a legit movie star.  (Spoiler warning: Billy Zane is not a movie star, unless you count a supporting role in Uwe Bol’s opus-to-awful Bloodrayne as being a “movie star”.)

Why shouldn’t I — or anyone — like the Phantom?  It’s an olde school adventure film, true to it’s comic strip origins and reminiscent of 1930s serials (the film is even set in the 1930s, whitewashed of the Great Depression).  It’s got thrills, chills, romance, and a skeleton that strangles a dude!  The Phantom hearkens back to the exploits of Indiana Jones, a time when people used to use the word “hearkens” in sentences without fear of reprisal. 
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I have not yet seen Fireproof yet, but I was reminded of my admiration for this little movie that could when I read an article at nationalreview.com more on the movie’s success than the movie itself.  You can check out the article here. 

For those unaware, Fireproof is a family friendly movie made by Christians with a positive message about seeing a marriage through tough times.  Other than Kirk Cameron, no one in the cast is an experienced or trained actor.  Everyone, including Cameron, volunteered their time for the movie which was filmed on a shoe-string budget.  

Despite being dismissed by most critics (the same critics that love utter crap like Benjamin Button and Babel, so what do they know?), Fireproof came from outside the studio system blew away expectations at the box-office grossing approximately $33 million.  Every person I know who has seen the movie (and there have been several) give it a hearty recommendation, and on their behalf I endorse it as well.  I’ve never written a blog to praise a film I haven’t seen, but the fact that Fireproof’s success is a testimony to the financial viability of bonafide family – if not outright Christian – films.  Hollywood can finance Mike Myers’ the Love Guru but not one mainstream film designed to appeal to the enormous religious portion of the population?
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