Film is Pwn

My parents watched the Kevin James comedy vehicle, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, in the past week and detested it.  My folks leant me the DVD in hopes that I would watch it and explain what kind of person might like this film.  I watched Paul Blart and thought it was ”okay” at best.  It was just there, not entertaining enough to enjoy and not distasteful enough to detest. 

Fortunately, Tom trashed Paul Blart last week (click here to read his fine blog) so I didn’t have to write it up.  I’m not sure if I could stretch 300 words out of my feeling for the film.  “Eh,” pretty much sums it up.  I had told my folks that Paul Blart was meant for ten year-olds, but apparently one other person liked it: No less that Roger Flippin’ Ebert.

On a lark I checked out Rottentomatoes.com to see how many top critics liked Blart, and 30% did, including Ebert.  Ebert gave Paul Blart: Mall Cop an astonishing 3 stars, only one less than the full four he bestowed on the wretched Nicolas Cage end-of-the-world flick Knowing. Here’s a quote from his review: (more…)

I would like to begin this theatrical analysis with the best kind of compliment, a backhanded one: The Hangover is one of the better raunchy, difficult-to-watch comedies I’ve seen.  I’m not a fan of crass, “Shock and Awwwww” films such as American Pie and their ilk.  The “Shock” is because the punch line is more often than not either nudity or profanity, and the “Awwwww” is because my reaction is akin to: “Awwww that is thoroughly disgusting and unnecessary.” (more…)

Growing up, I was not a big fan of zombies. As a monster, I felt that they were actually quite terrible. They have no personality, are mindless and they move so slowly that one could fight them off with an arquebus (A 15th century muzzle loaded firearm that requires and enormous amount of time between shots – I guess if I have to explain it, it isn’t a great reference). But the problem remained for the poor zombie. They were a lousy monster, and their place in films was limited to low budget drek. But oh how times have changed… zombie are now en vogue and some films have reinvented them as strong, agile creatures (See I Am Legend, but don’t read the book, they are vampires in the book). The trailer for Zombieland was great, and the film looked to be fast paced and exciting… (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…)

Radioland Murders is an odd duck, no doubt.  A movie probably not a lot of people have heard of, and, though I’m fond of it, I don’t think many film connoisseurs will go to their grave regretting that they never saw that Brian Benben comedy Radioland Murders.

Radioland Murders is the brainchild of Star Wars creator George Lucas, which isn’t always a good thing (see the last Indiana Jones movie and the latter Star Wars trilogy for proof).  Released in 1994, Radioland Murders is caught somewhere between slapstick comedy and dark comedy, which is often an uneasy mix.  For better or worse, the imbalance is offset by the frenetic pace, which launches the audience from scene to scene and joke to joke, so if you don’t like one there’s a different one seconds later, and maybe you’ll like that one.

The setting is a 1930s radio station on its first night attempting to become the fourth national station.  The premiere is a red-carpet affair at a theater (yes, audiences actually used to attend radio events in person) and is not only fraught with madcap antics and catastrophes bordering on hilarity but also . . . (dramatic pause) . . . murder! (more…)

There have been a lot of good-to-great movies about cons and con men to date.   There’s the Robert Redford-Paul Newman classic The Sting to comedies like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels to any number of terrific David Mamet films (Heist, Spanish Prisoner, The House of Games), and honestly my knee jerk reaction is that The Brothers Bloom is right up there with the best of them.  (Perhaps in an homage to Mamet, the Brothers Bloom begins with narration performed by Ricky Jay, a magician/actor who appears in most of Mamet’s films, and all three of the Mamet-con movies I referenced.)

There’s a pair of con man brothers, Bloom (Adrien Brody) and Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) who work with a mostly mute Japanese demolitions expert appropriately named Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi).  Stephen is the master manipulator, the designer of the schemes who plots confidence games with the flair for the dramatic akin to 19th century Russian novelists.  Bloom is perpetually unsure of his role in the swindles, ever promising this job will be the last, and always being talked into one more by his protective big brother Stephen. (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 had a very different review of New York Lately planned in my head as the closing credits rolled.  This was the first narrative film I’d seen at the Charlotte Film Festival, and I wasn’t impressed.  It was a full length feature, a notch above student films, but much of the cast looked like they were film student buddies of the director or struggling actors who happened to be available that week and were willing to work for half a Subway sandwich.  A couple performers stood above the rest (Mark DiConzo, Susan Cagle, and that’s the list), a couple scenes had some genuinely interesting moments, and I think I chuckled twice (this is a romantic-comedy-drama, or, as we with Press passes at film festivals say, a “rom-com-dram”.)

New York Lately is about a bunch of disparate, loosely connected New Yorkers falling out of love, falling in love, and looking for love.  There are familiar archetypes, like the two coffeehouse girls, one trying to become an actress and the other trying to become a singer; there’s the disaffected office worker who’s afraid his job — firing people, it seems — has sucked the soul out of him; there’s the guy whose girlfriend wants time apart, and he is torn between winning her back and moving on.
(more…)

As you may or may not know or care, Film is Pwn on the “Screeners list” at our friends at the Asylum — the studio that brought us and the world such classics as Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and the TerminatorS — which is the ONLY studio we’ve actually contacted to get on the distribution list.  The problem with getting on too many of these lists is that you’re kind of obligated to review the DVDs when you get them, and I don’t want to be stuck reviewing season Season One of Saved By the Bell: The College Years. 

All year, the Asylum has churned out the kind of movie I love — low-budget, fun/bad Sci-Fi/action stuff.  The Film is Pwn staff eagerly anticipates the arrival of these DVDs, and drop everything at a moments notice to assemble at the Pwn Cave when the DVD comes.  But, as I mentioned in my Odds ‘n Ends blog from a few days ago, the latest Asylum release is an exception.  It’s a unrated, unratable stoner comedy called “Sex-Pot” that boasts being a cross between “Harold & Kumar” and “Half-Baked,” but looks more like the worst movie we’ve ever seen, National Lampoon’s Gold DIggers.   *Shudder*  (more…)

After viewing what is sadly not the final film in Jim Carrey’s career, I felt I could not write a review.  A review has many words while only single words were coming to mind: Dreadful, Nauseating, Unforgivable… but I will give it a shot, but where to start…

Jim Carrey basically gives the same performance he gave in many of his early films making faces and acting zany, but he lacks the energy of those older roles and times seems tired.  I would say the plot is laughable, but neither I nor any of the people in the room were laughing.  Anything that happens seems to happen solely to further the action or to provide an awkward moment for Carrey to act out (Such as the hilarious scene where he receives a blow job from an old woman who is kind enough to remove her dentures – wait, that wasn’t funny – well now we are back to nauseating again…), rather than following any logical progression.  I could be totally off on this because the character development was non existent (luckily the characters were kind enough to announce their feelings and the feelings of other characters fairly regularly.

Then there is Jim Carrey’s love interest played by the beautiful and talented Zooey Deschanel.  Why?  Putting aside the fact that the age difference makes Carrey’s performance seem like creepy uncle, I adore Zooey Deschanel and after seeing this abomination all I could say is why Zoeey, why?  This is not a knock on her acting, she did what she could with what she was given.  All in all, this was what felt like hours and hours of my life I will never get back.  Terrible, just terrible.

Just a brief recap of last night’s live Rifftrax show simulcast in theaters nationwide, which I attended at Regal at Crownpoint, Charlotte, NC:

The program for the evening began with the stars (Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett) said a few words about how they were live, and anything could go wrong.  I was hoping the audio difficulty we had in the theater, where the audio lagged about a second behind the video, was a gag, but that wasn’t the case, and it was rather distracting for the first half hour.  Luckily the first event was a heretofore unrifffed short on “Flying Stewardesses,” which featured no speaking parts, just a narrator, so the audio-visual problem didn’t come into play.  It was a great short, plenty of terrific lines, as in when Bill as the pilot, thanked the passengers for keeping the plane “snake free.”
(more…)