2012

I have just finished watching the movie called "2012". While this movie did seem to have a large budget and was written well, it was just another 'end of the world' type of movie. I am filing this on the shelf with movies like "Armageddon" and "The Day After Tomorrow". It was very intriguing to watch disaster after disaster - many of which had spectacular theatrics. I was especially wowed with the scene of the tiny plane flying around a crumbling southern California. The other scene that stands out in my mind is the almost literal explosion of Yellowstone park. However, most of the movie was scene after scene of the same type of thing.

The mini-plots weaved into the movie were quite well done. Many of them were emotional and heart-wrenching. You can expect families being torn apart, massive well done speeches done by world leaders and other ethical aspects. What this movie severally lacks though is any relation to it's origin - The Mayans. There was a brief scene in which the Mayans were mentioned and the date of 12-21-2012. Everything surrounding this less then one minute scene was more the same theatrics that Hollywood is so famous for. Every disaster movie derives its suspense from trying to guess which of the characters will survive and which will expire. One of the disappointments of "2012" is how predictable the crash-and-burn list turns out to be. As in many of these epics, the characters who have committed some kind of extramarital transgression are the ones marked for death.

 Directed by: Roland Emmerich

Produced by: Harald Kloser

Cinematography: Dean Semler

Distributed by: Columbia Pictures

Running time: 158 minutes

Country: Canada, United States

Language: English

Budget: $200 million[1]

Box office: $769,679,473[2

Balls of Fury

 The first movie I saw upon my return was Balls of Fury, about a short, stubby loser who seeks glory in the world of competitive Ping-Pong. Its like I never left! And while I have nothing against either film aside from the fact that theyre both terrible  I do have one request. Can summer please be over now? Balls of Fury  is raunchier and somewhat more imaginative than Hot Rod, and it will be must viewing for Christopher Walken completists who have mislaid their special collectors edition DVD of The Country Bears. Mr. Walken plays a super-villain named Feng, who dresses in red brocade and whose passions are Ping-Pong and having people killed with poison darts shot from a blowgun. I will forgo plot summary, since it would take me longer to recount the story than it took the screenwriters, Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, to come up with it. Dan Fogler, looking like the love child of Jack Black and the pornographic-film star Ron Jeremy, plays Randy Daytona, a former Olympic Ping-Pong prodigy who comes out of retirement to avenge his father’s death and help an F.B.I. agent (George Lopez) catch Feng.

Along the way, Balls of Fury shambles through a checklist of lowbrow comedy conventions. Theres borderline-offensive ethnic humor (Asians talk funny! They eat strange food and speak a different language!), a few bouts of queasily self-conscious homophobic humor, and of course a gorgeous babe in short shorts (Maggie Q), who falls in love with our nebbishy, hygienically challenged hero. As usual, the gags and jokes are hit (mainly in the testicles, with Ping-Pong paddles) and miss. Mr. Garant, who directed, does manage to approximate the grungy texture of old Hong Kong action movies, and to execute the Ping-Pong sequences with some panache. But the movie seems to exist mainly so that some critic might say: If you see just one table tennis martial arts parody this year, make it Balls of Fury. Im afraid I can’t go that far.

Directed by Robert Ben Garant; written by Thomas Lennon and Mr. Ben Garant; director of photography, Thomas Ackerman; edited by John Refoua; music by Randy Edelman; production designer, Jeff Knipp; produced by Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber, Jonathan Glickman and Mr. Lennon; released by Rogue Pictures. Running time: 90 minutes.

Enchanted

I even had time to squeeze in a matinee movie.  My choice was the film “Enchanted.”  It came highly recommended. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this movie.  The movie is a children’s film.  In my mind the trailers weren’t convincing.  Adult opinions that followed changed my mind. This is a film about the blending of the world of make-believe into the real world.  Fantasy characters are thrust through a portal by an evil queen who is jealous and prideful.  Each character from the world of fantasy transforms into a humanoid and lands in New York. But, each arrives with their fantasy personality, culture and costume.

It is comical, amazingly creative and just plain fun.  Blending the two worlds of real and imaginary was fantastic.  Then, I was fascinated to watch the characters change, morph into their new setting.  It wasn’t easy to fit in.  Misunderstandings abounded.  It was so awkward I started to pay attention to the message behind the conflicts. The wonderful values of love, belief, trust, and romance were all a part of  this story.  These higher ideals took over the story.  Sillyness and fun had disguised the realization that we have all lost something special in our cynical world.  We can regain it.

I was tickled by the test of a true love kiss.  This measure of the presence of true love is something I believe has a great deal of merit.  It may require some scientific testing to insure its veracity, however.  That means repeated experiments.  We might have a very good idea here. Belief in the good that can happen when love has its way is a worthy consideration for all of us.  After all, anticipation of eventual other-worldly good is what all of us who are people of faith hope for, isn’t it?

That amazing triad is replete throughout this fun film.  Faith, hope and love is still God’s immeasurable gift to all who dare to look His way.  If our children who see this movie rejunvinate their passion for true love and a happy-ever-after, then that is a very good thing.  Maybe all of us adults who can find a little one as an excuse to go and see it ourselves would also find it a good thing.  It’s a classic case of the lesser pointing out the joy of something far greater.

The Book OF Eli

The Book of Eli" manages to do almost everything right, the casting is very good, Denzel Washington does a good job as a hardened man on a mission, the landscape and special effects are superb, the directing and pace of the film are just right for an action/thriller, and the action scenes are almost over the top, but not too bad and they aren't too numerous or drawn out.

What kills "The Book of Eli" is the book.  What is it?  Why are people willing to kill for it?  The implication in the trailers is that it's a Bible, but surely, there is more to the story than that, right?  Wrong.  It's a King James version of the Bible.  Survivors of the war which brought on this apocalypse blamed religions and tried to destroy all copies of religious texts.

 Oldman's character is after what is believed to be the last, remaining copy of the Bible because he believes it will allow him to control more people over a greater area.  Maybe it will, but you can always just make up a new religion.  Most of the people alive grew up after the war and can't read anyway.  Denzel's character is taking the Bible west because God speaks to him.  Also, God is protecting him on his journey, as in bullets seem to miraculously miss or bounce off of him and he can easily slaughter people who try to take his Bible away.  (Very Christian.)  It is at this point that the movie loses me completely.

 I can take that it's a Bible and people are willing to kill for its potential power over the masses, but Denzel's character is being guided by the inner voice of God, he is actively being protected by the hand of God, and, in the end, we discover (twist ending!) that he is blind, so he is actually being guided by God.  Where's the suspense in that?  This movie's ending is (forgive me for this one) preordained once we discover that God is actively involved. 

It ends with Denzel's character getting to Alcatraz Island, where a group of people have been preserving books and are beginning to reprint them.  Denzel's character dies, because any Christan prophet also had to be a martyr, the King James version of the Bible (how many versions of the Bible are there?) is placed on a shelf next to other religious texts, so as to be politically correct, and Mila Kunis' character inherits Denzel's hardened look and starts her journey back to her home town; apparently a new prophet. 

I'm sorry, but as soon as bullets started bouncing off of him and Denzel said he was guided by the voice of God, I knew everything that was going to happen and was just bored waiting for the inevitable end.  The shocking, twist endings of Denzel's character being blind and the Bible being written in Braille only manage to hammer home the now undeniable fact that, for this movie anyway, yes, there is a God and he wants, specifically, the King James version of the Bible to survive.  (Sorry Greek Orthodox Catholics and most non-European Christian sects.)  How this movie went from post apocalyptic action/thriller to dogma of certain Christian sects, I'm really not sure, but it was a wrong turn.

300

Director: Zack Snyder

Gerard Butler (King Leonidas)

Lena Headey (Queen Gorgo)

Dominic West (Theron)

David Wenham (Dilios)

Vincent Regan (Captain)

Rodrigo Santoro (Xerxes)

Based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., “300" tells the story of King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), ruler of Sparta. When the Persians threaten invasion, King Leonidas rallies all of Sparta to war, though his cries go unheard by the high priests and the rest of the council. Leonidas breaks traditions, and along with 300 Spartan warriors, travels to the coast to meet an army of millions.

 But, as we are told countless times, Spartan soldiers are not like other soldiers – they are trained to kill from the time they can walk, and each Spartan can pretty much take out 100 men by himself. Leonidas and his 300 men spend much of the film slashing and dashing through the Persian forces like they’re nothing, finding chaotic zeal in their slaughtering and even hoping that they are afforded the chance to die in battle.

 Meanwhile, back in Sparta, the corrupt Theron (Dominic West) is trying everything he can to keep Leonidas’ wife, the Queen (Lena Headey) from speaking to the council in an effort to rally more troops to meet Leonidas. I would venture to say that 75% of this film is battle sequences – Leonidas and his men continually killing everything in site and overcoming staggering odds on the battlefield. The film finally ends in a blaze of glory for the Spartans – something they wanted all along.

There are some fundamental problems with this film. “300" wants to be the blood soaked epic of the year, touting its R-rating like a certificate of authenticity. The problem is that none of the blood looks real. When I see someone killed in a Scorsese picture, I feel it. When Joe Pesci went ballistic in the guy in the bar with the ink pen – I felt it. It was painful. When I see Leonidas and his men running up and down the battlefield, swinging their swords wildly with CGI blood flying at the screen, it has no more affect on me than watching someone killed in “Grand Theft Auto”.

Therefore, any emotional attachment I might traditionally develop for the characters is gone. I don’t care if they live or die because dying doesn’t look real. “300" lacks a lot of human emotion than was present in other war epics like “Gladiator”, “Braveheart” and even “Troy”. What “300" tries to do is present a balls-to-the-wall action film with as much blood and carnage as possible. That would be fine if they didn’t introduce us to characters like Queen Gorgo and Captain (Vincent Regan), who loses his son in battle. Normally, I would feel bad for a father who loses a son, but even the father himself states early on that he has more sons to replace him. How can you act like a blood-thirsty killer one moment and then a sensitive grieving father the next? That didn’t work for me and all of the emotion was lost. “300" was a case of commotion over emotion.

Spiderman 3

 

     

     This movie had inconsistent pacing and at times it felt choppy. A better editing could have tightened the movie and make it stronger (cut out the extra/unnecessary scenes, have a better sequencing of events). Usually in comic genre, this choppiness is understandable (McCloud's theory- the reader participates and imagines the on goings in the 'gutter'- make things happen, the reader is like the projector that makes the picture move) but in the movie genre, smooth flow and transition are necessary (the choppiness is more obvious because it's immediate, the audience instead of the reader is receiving information through sight instead of letter and symbols which need to be deciphered).

      The tone of this movie is undefined. In Spiderman 1, the tone was consistently dark with a sprinkle of humor (which surprised me especially since Spiderman is a masked hero wearing royal blue and crimson tights- in my mind I'm thinking about Wolverine's comment in the X-men movie about yellow spandex). However in Spiderman 3 it wasn't as dark as I thought it was going to be (I like the concept of the "symbiosis" feeding off hatred and turning the Spiderman suit into black but this wasn't consistent- with better editing, the movie could have focused on this plot as the main arch, and added on to it instead of making it as one of the little plots). The beauty of the first movie is its credibility (its comicness and campiness are not so blatant). The campiness- forget acting, it's all about miming and exaggeration, which do not work in the film medium- it looks fake. It's not the same in paper (the frozen exaggerated moments are apt to spur the reader to imagine the rest)

Spiderman 3 can't stand on it's own (not like the first one), it needs the first two for the audience to understand the growth and maturation of Peter Parker. Having said this, the director/producers have no excuse of disregarding the factors that made the first one successful for the sake of doing something novel to the final installment of the Spiderman trilogy.

      

      The factors, which made the first one successful, include great integration and balance from the comic medium to film (importance of flow, pacing, centralized/main plot, strong believable characters). This movie tried to accomplish too much in a "short" time. Instead of making a bang, this movie fizzled out. Potential wasted. 

Night At The Musieum

The truth is that I really don't know what the purpose of that kind of movies like "Night at the Museum". You'll say it's Christmas and the kids gonna see movies. But wait a minute, is that what they call movie ? 1 hour and 40 min. of a movie with no start and certainly not even close to an end. We all know that Hollywood lost 10 years now their inspiration for new scripts but this In movie "Night at the Museum" we can see two very good comedians (Robin Williams, Ben Stiller) playing with no imagination and I guess because the script is awfull. Come on the only thing may save the night is Robin Williams scowls in a role that few can understand, as for the Ben Stiller he was in the shadow of his last good perfomance in Starsky & Hutch. Owen Wilson also played in a role close to his potentials. nothing extraordinary but close to good.

 For Shawn Levy the director my feelings are not that good, in such an easy film he lost the direction and he couldn't find the chemistry between Williams and Stiller. The only credit I can give to "Night at the Museum" are the visual effects, visual friendly to childs and not that fake to older people. The "naughty" monkey was an inspired character and Tyrannosaurus Rex with dog chips injekted to him. If you forced just like me to see "Night at the Museum" watch out maybe your child bored before you cause this film very nonsense who was creat this thing. I think before the creator do this, he must think logically two pull audiens with the real exploration in this story. For example, after a nature and disaster was happen in that musieum, all thing that have inside musieum all already has broken and what a audiens thinking  very peculiar is why  that all tool is arranged into the origin