Thursday, August 20, 2009

District 9

D-9

Okay! We have a cool movie in this one. I enjoyed it. I watched it twice. :D

So it's about aliens living on Earth. They come here in the 80's and can't leave due to a fuel problem on the control ship-thing that fell off the mothership.

Our story follows Wickus van der Merwe and his exposure to the "fluid" which (wait for it) starts him transforming into an alien! OMG! LOL!

The aliens, oft called "Prawns," are cool looking... but fake looking... you really have to get into the characters on this on. It's a great character film.

The whole thing reminds me of a strange cross between a documentary and a video game.

I don't have a lot to say other than "you should see it." So... you should see it. :)

I'll give it a 3/5 star rating. It's a movie you should see, but it won't be the best movie you ever see.

"You are one brave white man."

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

G.I. JOE -Rise of Cobra (or some such silly title)

Okay,

It's been far, far, far too long since I've written a review. Blarf?

Oi!

Anywho, I saw GI Joe last night. It was mediocre at best. Actually there were a couple of times when I broke down laughing... sadly they were some rather not-supposed-to-be-funny scenes.
:( Fail, anyone?

I think the climax of cheese may have been when Rex (who is wearing a metal mask, talking rather deeply, and has a machine making loud breathing noises) says the line, "No, Duke...[this is not the end]" or something. I just remember the "No, Duke." Darth Vader versus the Joes? Hmm... epic... but fail. Epic fail. Fail epically. Epically epic failing failure. Fail.

"No, Duke, I am your future brother in law." Hehe... that would have at least been purposefully funny.

That wasn't the only Star Wars nod that Joe gave (without attempting to give any). There was a shot where a ship flies out of a tunnel through a big explosion. :D My brother, Behemoth, and I looked at each other with expressions that were confused mixtures of "What the hell," "Millenium Falcon?" and "Did they REALLY just do that?" Needless to say I was not impressed.

The writing was mediocre, the acting barely tollerable (with two exceptions**) and the directing weak.

That being said... I enjoyed it. :D If you LOVE the toys (and I grew up on those toys) and you like laughing at cheesey sci-fi then this movie is for you. Although (since I have OCD and am something of a prude) I would torment myself if I did not warn of some racey outfits.

**The two exceptions to the barely tollerable rule would be Christopher Eccleston as James McCullen/Destro (he was great) and the chick who's name I can't find who carried the clipboard and got stabbed (she was SO awful that it wasn't even tollerable).

Overall 2/5 stars. : It was okay.

Okay.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Knowing - After Sleeping on It

Ok,

Well I slept on it, and it was horribly uncomfortable. (Ga ha ga ha ga ha! As if that joke wasn't totally overused.)

Anyway, in the spirit of the movie I decided to give this review in a number code. If you're actually interested in knowing what I have to say, you'll have to solve my code. Bwuahahaha.

Since I believe there's a grand total of -pi people who care what I have to say, this code may go un-cracked until the end of time.

009012109211305405504020108205013115222309405009120013105019109212305001012115220
0021152250this is harder than I thought it would be. Ha!

Ok... so... if I ever have time I'll do a whole review in code. I got bored pretty quickly with that one. Even so... I... sorta tried.

Over all, after sleeping on it, I still give the movie 4/5 stars. It's worth watching, but not the best movie ever made. Hopefully not the best movie I review this year.

(I still can't believe it is March and I've only watched one new movie! Oi! It's the 23rd... I better do my taxes soon.)

~Magillichetti

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Knowing - First Impressions

Ok,

(I like starting like that...)

I'm going to say right now SPOILERS!!

Don't read this if you hate knowing how things turn out.

From "Shit just happens" to "It's not the end." An Alex Proyas movie.


My first impression is: "Gee I hate end of the world flicks."

But let's go beyond that, and look at the movie as a whole, because really only the last 8 - 10 minutes (in my estimation) were end of the world.

Ok, so it begins in 1959, Lucinda (Laura Robinson - great acting btw) is a little girl who puts a letter into a time capsule. The letter was seemingly dictated by the "Whisperers." She heard whispers and wrote numbers... and they didn't lock her up? She even went missing after the ceremony where they buried the time capsule. (And I tell ya, someone needs to tell those cops about lights. I mean, they're searching a BRAND NEW SCHOOL for a little girl, and they are all using flashlights. I only noticed them turn on one light during the search scene. Goofy.)

Fifty years later young Caleb Koestler (Chandler Canterbury) gets the letter when the time capsule is opened.

His father John Koestler (Nicholas Cage) figures out that the numbers represent disasters. They are the date, casualties, and longitude latitude coordinates. The final disaster is happening on October 19th of 2009, and it has no death toll, only two symbols that turn out to be a mistakenly backwards EE.

John employs the help of Lucinda's daughter (Diana Wayland, portrayed by Rose Byrn) and granddaughter to discover the answers to the questions. (Ol' Lucy had an OD years ago.) Abby (the granddaughter, also portrayed by Laura Robinson --at least according to wikipedia--) and Caleb can hear the same whisperings that Lucinda could hear. They say "You can come with us if you choose." (Or something like that. Quoting from memory here.) Little mistake here. John Koestler happens to know Abby's name without ever being told. I guess we could assume that he looked up her name when he tracked down Lucinda's family, but Diana seems totally unconcerned that this strange man knows her daughter's name already. I suspect a deleted scene.

Oh my the mystery! What does EE stand for? Why is there no longitude and latitude? What can they do to survive? Why are Abby and Caleb hearing the whisperers? Who are the strange guys with bleached hair? (I know I didn't tell you about them yet. Hehe.)

Strange guys with bleached hair show up periodically through the movie. They don't talk, but it is made clear (eventually) that they are the whisperers. They like to give out black rocks. Go figure.

It is finally made clear that EE stands for "Everyone Else" (number of casualties) and there is no one location on Earth... the entire planet is gonna burn. A massive solar flare is gonna fry the place. "I don't wanna make the world burn."

The movie was awesome up to a point around where all this is revealed. Right after the car crash scene it tends towards cheese. (The car crash is the last good scene, although not everything was cheese after that point, it is where the story overall turned into cheese. Acting and overall film making remained the same quality, just the story went south --in my opinion--)

Anyway... to make a long story short-ish: The whisperers turn out to be angliens. (It is semi-obvious that the film makers wanted the viewer to decide whether they were angels or aliens, so I call them angliens.) The angliens take Abby and Caleb to another planet to "start over," but leave behind the poor un-chosen A.K.A, those who didn't hear the whispers. The place where the space ship came to get the kids and the angliens had thousands of the little black rocks on the ground... I guess that's supposed to explain why they liked to give them out. "Here's some dirt from our landing pad. Hope it leads you to us!" EH? It'd just creep the (insert expletive here) out of me if some guy (with bleached hair) gave me a rock. Bear in mind THEY DON'T TALK!

It is implied (but not directly shown) that there are other chosen people that the angliens saved.

The movie has the kids running up to a big tree on their new home in a sunshiny world wearing white clothes. I couldn't help but think "Don't eat the fruit!"

Anyway... I still hate end of the world flicks, but this was a well done movie. I only dislike the ending.

I think the angliens were cool until they turned into glowing, blue, naked people. (Nothing explicit. Outlined butts is the closest to nudity you get with them really.) They were creepy while you thought they were evil.

The acting was good over all. I still dunno about Caleb's character though. Chandler is either very talented and was portraying a slightly odd child, or untalented and came off as slightly odd. You decide when you see it.

Yeah go see it.

I'd give it 4/5 stars. I liked the idea, but the ending was somewhat predictable. Half way through the film my friend is like "It's the sun!"

Haha... I watched the world burn.

Ok,

Memorable scene: John Koestler takes out a hand gun and checks it... and then takes out the manual and reads it.

Knowing

Ok,

I'm going to watch "Knowing" tonight.

The previews were good, but not phenomenal. So we'll see.
It appears to be about a boy who gets some sort of code that predicts disasters. Could be interesting.

Look for my full review probably tomorrow.

Ciao, ok?

~Magillichetti

Thursday, March 19, 2009

2008 Summary

Ok, so in trying to get this started I'm going to briefly summarize the movies I saw from last year.
In future posts I will be doing more detailed reviews about movies as I watch them.
This post (being about last year's movies) may contain spoilers, in future posts I will try and avoid them

1) The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Decent show, not as good (or as close to the book) as the first one. Why did they get Fabbio Jr. to play Caspian?

2) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Despite what my friends say, I think it was a good movie. It was meant to be entertaining, not thought provoking, but how can you NOT like an Indiana Jones movie? Besides that... there were aliens!

3) The Dark Knight

The highest grossing picture on this list, The Dark Knight, is possibly the best done movie I have seen in the last decade. Heath Ledger is amazing, Christian Bale needs to give his Batman a cough drop again, and Michael Caine is... Michael Caine-ish!

4) Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Ah, the proverbial sequel to a great cartoon. (No, I don't know what proverb I'm referencing... but there has GOT to be one.) Once again the supporting cast was phenomenal. The penguins are quite possibly the greatest animated characters to grace the silver screen .

However I am considering boycotting the new TV show "The Penguins of Madagascar" because Christopher Knights, and ONLY Christopher Knights, is the true Private. No one else can play him.

Likewise Chris Miller, and ONLY Chris Miller, should be Kowalski... what's the deal with scratching them? If the show is too cheap to keep the cast that made them great then I don't know if it will be worth watching!

They must be prejudice against them. Notice how they are both "Chris?" I think it's a plot. They wish to rid anyone who's name is Chris-related of their stardom! Christian Bale had better watch out!

I say, "BAH!" and then I say it again, "BAH!"

Anyway... I know I saw more movies last year, but those are the highlights.

Thanks,

~Magillichetti