Film is Pwn

The horror movie “The Gingerdead Man” can be found in the DVD section marked “Yes, this movie actually exists.”  Other films in this section include, but are not limited to, Mansquito, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, and Jonas Brothers in 3-D.

All these films had a screenwriter who took the time off from his job at Sbarro to pen a script.  Actors signed on to the project either out of desperation or out of a game of truth or dare gone horribly, horribly wrong.  A director agreed to participate after failing to land that lucrative Caveman sitcom gig.  And perhaps most galling, someone, perhaps a billionaire hopped up on ether, gave these souls money to make it happen.  How did the stars align for these feature films but my own screenplay, Smokey the Bear vs. Alexander the Great: To the Pain! remains in limbo?  Who knows, but this isn’t about me selling that screenplay (contact me at DanielRoos1978@hotmail.com if you know anyone interested!). (more…)

On the heels of my post detailing Sly Stallone’s beating at the hands of Stone Cold Steve Austin, comes this wonderful article chronicling the attempts by a 49 year old Van Dam to get a real honest to goodness fight with 3 time Olympian Somluck Kamsing.  Really?  Does he really think this is a good idea?  This is a guy who looses fights with hotel rooms.  Well, the fight would have to take place abroad as it would never be sanctioned in the US.  He is 49 years old for Pete’s sake! (more…)

 Back when Sky Captain was first coming out I stared at the trailers longingly. The posters called my name and in the years since the dvds have cried out to me from the shelves. Finally, at long last, I took the time to watch it. I loved and hated it. To some extent I still love what it could have been, but then reality strikes and I hate what it actually was. (more…)

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 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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Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver
Directed By: James Cameron

I have just witnessed what is allegedly the most expensive movie ever made, James Cameron’s gaudy, luminous follow-up to 1997’s Titanic, Avatar.  Yes, Cameron took a dozen years between releases, in part because he wanted to make Avatar and needed to wait for the technology to keep up with his vision.  What the dozen year lapse tells me is that the shiny spectacle in Avatar is way more important than other little elements like story and characters, and it shows.

The key characters are the alien race called the Na’vi who are sadly impossible for me to take seriously.  They’re giant, blue-skinned humanoid creatures with tails and long necks.  Think if Smurfette mated with Randy Johnson. If that image doesn’t conjure up what the Na’vi look like, imagine a race of blue Jar Jar Binks’. Get the picture? (more…)

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…)

The last time I bought a ticket to catch a film in the theater was over a month earlier and it was disastrous, no less than Gerard Butler’s lunch-displacing, sickening actioner Gamer.  (By saying “bought a ticket” I exclude the great experience had at the Charlotte Film Festival, wherein my cohorts and I got in free with our press passes, hee hee).

Not one to dip my toes in the pool but rather one to jump head first into the deep end, my next paying customer excursion to the theaters post-Gamer was for yet another Gerard Butler film, this time a thriller opposite with Jamie Foxx, Law-Abiding Citizen. (more…)

You’d think a movie by our favorite cheap-o movie studio The Asylum (of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus fame) that debuts on the greatest night for fun/bad movies — 9 pm Eastern on the SyFy Channel – as a SyFy Channel Original would be a sure bet.  I’m a little disappointed to report that my reaction to MegaFault was: eh.

Perhaps my expectations were set too high (i.e., too low) but MegaFault wasn’t that entertaining.  Sure there are some trademark, so-cheap-it’s-funny special effects, some terrible acting, and a handful of recognizable names in the cast (woe to you Brittany Murphy, Bruce Davison, and Eriq La Salle), but this one just wasn’t fun.  Maybe I’ve seen too may of these, maybe it’s the fact that MegaFault is a disaster movie and I I’ve never met a disaster movie I liked, or maybe this one just wasn’t special. (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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Bronson.  It’s an independent movie skillfully and artfully made.  Tom Hardy, looking like a true Haberdasher, plays the titular Bronson — based on the real life story of Britain’s most notorious and expensive — and is brilliant.  If someone were to talk Best Actor for Mr. Hardy, I couldn’t disagree; it’s a brave, bold, menacing performance. 

The director makes some stylistic choices with Bronson, in his mind, putting on a campy stage show to an enraptured audience where he gets to explain his sick, perverse outlook on life.   There are other more serious moments where Bronson speaks to the camera directly as if in a confessional, where the nutjob is about as lucid about his madness as possible.  I thought they worked and were interesting.

And I utterly detested the movie.  I can’t fathom why a talented group of men and women would willingly conspire to write, produce, cast, direct, and perform the material.  I derived no entertainment value from the experience and I would strongly encourage any caring human being to keep clear of theaters screening Bronson with a 30 mile radius, just to make sure they don’t accidentally wander into one of the showings by mistake.  If there is a scientist who intends to show Bronson to criminally, clinically insane lab rats to gauge their reaction, I would gladly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those loons from PETA to protest cruelty to animals.
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