Film is Pwn

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…)

Starring: Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich, Timothy Olyphant, Kiele Sanchez
Directed By: David Twohy

A Perfect Getaway is the kind of thriller where you just know there is going to be a twist ending.  The way my mind works, when I suspect a shocking twist is afoot, I can guess what it is going to be 94.7% of the time.  When you’re playing the “who’s the killer” game, generally it is as simple as  picking the individual the movie wants you to suspect the least.  For an example of how this ending can make you so mad you’ll want to find the screenwriter and sternly wag your finger in his direction, see my review of Halle Berry/Bruce Willis’ cinematic abomination Perfect Stranger.

I ended up liking A Perfect Getaway more than enough to recommend it as a “renter,” so I’m going to be rather vague and unspecific so as not to spoil aforementioned twist. Although if you are unable to guess the twist based off the following description and my assurance that there is a twist, I will be forced to ban you from this site forever. Be warned, be warners: (more…)

I had to see Avatar. I’m not sure I had another choice in the matter. The buzz oozing from every orifice of movie goers round the world insisted upon it. The bad news is I rarely think as highly of movies with this much buzz. District 9 comes to mind.

For starters, James Cameron is talented. Very talented. He managed to bring life to a story I saw coming within the first ten minutes. He managed to make it interesting, heartwarming and very much engaging. The world was interesting and fresh, even if the story was tired. Somehow he managed to make me look past the thousand plot holes as I sat in the theater. My mind was fixated on the Na’vi and the inevitability of their story.

Visually it was pretty significant (it’s what everyone is talking about), the use of 3D mixed with live action was impressively done. The use of CGI with live action didn’t strike me as especially great or ground-breaking but I’ve seen a lot of movies so maybe that has something to do with it. Biologically I think his world had issues. For instance, why did all of his creatures seem to be carnivores despite mass quantities of jumbo size vegetation? But that’s nitpicking. The world is beautiful, fun and fairly scientifically accurate.

I hate that this film was so socially and politically charged. I like social cause movies and when it’s done well it can really be great. I think of “Hotel Rwanda” which though it wasn’t really accurate it shined a light on a grim reality; which I think is always a good thing. Avatar though didn’t shine light on a grim reality; it was preaching to the choir. The people who agreed with the message would cheer and those who didn’t would groan or get angry.

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Office politics, temporary employees, ambitious corporate ladder climbers, sucking up to the boss, and murder most foul.  It’s a world I know too well, but as they say on Sesame Street: One of these is not the same; one of these is not like the other.  Yes, that’s right, what is “sucking up to the boss” doing on that list?  Everyone knows that’s unethical and off limits!

The 1993 movie The Temp features all those characteristics above plus 2,518% more sexiness than I’ve seen working in the corporate world in nine plus years crammed into an hour and a half.

Lara Flynn Boyle stars as the titular temp, Kris, who fills the spot as the secretary for yuppie cookie company executive Peter (Timothy Hutton).  Kris is one of those women who only work in fantasy, Hollywood offices where temporary employees are promoted to vice president in a week and Smurfs ride magic unicorns in the hallways.  In my list of objections, the part where Kris starts killing people to advance her career is relatively low.  On a completely unrelated note, I managed to get promoted to the department I’m currently in when the guy holding the position mysteriously disappeared with only a hand-written resignation note left in his wake, but no one ever heard from or saw him again.   Let us move on quickly and without further comment, shallst we? (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…)

As far as titles go, “The Bone Collector” sounds like it ought to be the tale of a forlorn archaeologist, unable to connect on a personal level with any living person until he meets the girl of his dream who brings him out of his shell and he finds love and discovers there’s more to life than hunting for bones in the desert.  *Sigh*  However, in this case, “The Bone Collector” turns out to be a cookie-cutter, garden-variety, thriller-novel-turned-thrill-free-movie that tries to be Silence of the Lambs but to actually watch soundless lambs is approximately twice as entertaining.

Taking away that rather cryptic summary and just examining the ingredients, there’s a lot going for The Bone Collector to be a good movie.  Of course, filet mignon, chocolate, french toast, and grapes are great, but not necessarily together if you catch my drift.

The Bone Collector has a good director in Phillip Noyce, the man behind the best of the Jack Ryan films and one of the better political thrillers, Clear and Present Danger.  The stars are no less than two of the best actors working, Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie (before she was an A-lister).  And it’s based on a novel – and all novels are inherently good, right?  Still, at best the movie feels like you are witnessing spare parts of better movies and at worst like they were kind of making the story up as they went.  I believe the great Michael J. Nelson once referred to a movie made from leftovers of better flicks as a “movieloaf” – and the Bone Collector is the perfect embodiment of a movieloaf.
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Walking into the theatre, press pass dangling around my neck and garnering stares and questioning glances, New York Lately was exactly the type of movie I hoped for and expected. Don’t take that to mean that it was good. This is a Film Festival, having never been to one, I sat in anticipation imagining what it would be like. I pondered my lack of skinny jeans and ironic t-shirts; both of which would no doubt be uniform for the event. Then I imagined the type of movie a person wearing skinny jeans and an ironic t-shirt would make.

I’m not making fun of this as much as it might seem. I wish I was cool enough to wear skinny jeans and clever enough to have ironic t-shirts, but instead I just wear normal jeans and a button down shirt. I wished I had shaved to have cool facial hair of some sort, but alas I had to just be me. Then as we arrived and looked around, I didn’t see a single pair of skinny jeans, and since most everyone was in a uniform for the festival the ironic t-shirts had been left in the closet. I was acceptable.

Interestingly New York Lately was still much the type of movie I imagined those non-existent stereotypes would produce. It was along the vein of movies like Babel and Magnolia. It’s the story of several people whose lives intertwine in some intricate way to produce a story that paints the picture of modern life with its connections and isolation. The problem is that few of these characters seemed real and the stories didn’t really intertwine at all. So it was more like the make-believe stories of disjointed people.

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Bronson is the story of a man. A man completely detached from the realities of the world and what it means to be human. He’s not nice, good or really evil in the typical sense of the word. What he does is evil but to him it appears that it’s nothing more than a game, a foray into the woods rather than being the very real actions with tangible consequences that they are.

I don’t believe I’ve enjoyed watching a movie more in a very long time. It seems clear to me that Director Nicolas Winding Refn had a clear vision when he chose to venture into this film. He was determined and he pulled together an outstanding cast and crew to see it into fruition. Tom Hardy as “England’s most violent criminal” is spot-on. His performance is dark and menacing, without remorse and completely insane. Exactly the type of man I rather imagine Bronson to be. There is no sanity to this film. No character to stabilize you. You feel constantly at odds against the main character, much, I imagine, like the prison guards must have felt these thirty years.

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I caught a showing of the brand-spankin’ new action movie, Gamer, that opened today, and I must say it is beyond terrible, it’s unwatchable. 
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In the last few weeks, I’ve watched a lot of really, really bad movies, so it is nice to blog on a movie I greatly enjoy and admire for a change. I am writing about a film based on a novel whose author himself considered his material “unfilmable” when he sold the movie rights.

It’s not just a 1950s Los Angeles crime story being told in 1997, it is a complicated, intricate plot that is almost impossible to follow.  The three lead characters the story follows are cops who are loosely connected and are initially unlikeable for different reasons (one smug, the other overly ambitious, the other prone to bursts of violence).  Two of said lead characters are portrayed by virtual unknowns from Australia (both are playing 100% pure bred American police officers).  The only significant female cast member is playing the cliche hooker with a heart of gold.  There’s enough plot and characters (with 80 speaking parts in the cast) to fill an eight hour mini-series, but the film crams it all into a movie at under two hours and fifteen minutes.  Oh, and did I mention Danny Devito has a major supporting role?

if you take all those various elements and put them together, one would expect an absolute mess.  What you get is, against all the odds, a masterpiece. (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…)

Of all the movies I’ve ever seen, Hard Rain may very well be the wettest, and I assure you that I have seen Finding Nemo, Titanic, and Halloween: H20.  How much water is splashed on screen in Hard Rain?  I believe that Water obtained an official membership card in the Screen Actor’s Guild due to its active participation.  I am relatively certain a showing of Hard Rain in your local theater would be sufficient to end a drought.  If it doesn’t, you very well could be fined for violating water conservation rules.  You think I’m kidding?  The flick clocks in a little over an hour and a half, and the longest stretch without a drop of liquid visible is TWELVE SECONDS,  4:55-5:07, as a bank manager empties the cash out of his vault.  The sheer eternity of dry screentime in the bank (in comparison to the rest of the liquefied frames of the film) is only to give impact to the moment where we see the flood waters come as the bank is being overrun.  There is also a relatively waterfree sequence in a bar, but there’s footage on the TV of flooding in the background to remind us what’s what.

For those who don’t remember or — perhaps even more shockingly — never saw Hard Rain when it “dropped” (as the kids say) in 1998, this is one of the relics from that bygone era when Christian Slater could headline major motion pictures.  Heck, Slater is even listed as a Co-Producer, and he has an “Assistant” in the credits.  A decade later, I don’t believe Mr. Slater got an assistant on the studio’s dime when he filmed his pivotal role in Hollow Man 2.  (These days, if a station airs Hard Rain, it prominently and understandably features co-star Morgan Freeman in the marketing, second billing going to Water.) (more…)