The story follows the life of Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai, Seven Samurai), a pacifist, and a fierce egalitarian. He marries his long time girlfriend, Michiko (Michiyo Aratama). Kaji is offered and reluctantly accepts a management position, at a mine in Japanese-colonized Manchuria (with a military exemption). At the mine, he is put in charge of Chinese POWs. These prisoners provide slave labor for the mining operation. His superiors and coworkers believe that he is a little too nice to the prisoners. Kaji manages to meet quotas in spite of what everyone else thinks. Eventually, he gets blamed for letting prisoners escape at night. It seems his coworkers are conspiring with the Chinese prisoners in a rather profitable venture. Some of Kaji's workers are falsely accused of trying to escape. In a matter of moments, Kaji ends up getting shipped off for mandatory military service.
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Hellboy 2
Hellboy and his buddies have to save the world from an underground race of beings. I'm not going to get into the plot because its fairly complicated.
Hellboy 2 had a solid director and visually this movie was quite impressive. Plain and simple, the movie was boring. The script, the dialog/relationships between the characters were pedestrian, trite, and unimaginative. I'd had no reason to care about these characters. The entire movie, the audience is well aware that all these characters are going to be unharmed and everything will be back to normal once they beat the bad guys (without much struggle). Conflict is the essence of any story, but this movie lacked anything of the sort.
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Rockin' Nut Road Snickers and Tim McGraw's Spicy Jalapeno Fritos
There are three possible ratings subpar, par, and über par.
Rockin' Nut Road Snickers- Repugnant would be an understatement. This candy bar is nothing short of atrocious. I feel like the Mars Corporation has personally assaulted me with this cornucopia of complete crap. After eating this, the only thing rocky I experienced was the road to recovery.
Rating: Subpar
Tim McGraw's Spicy Jalapeno Fritos- These are pretty much what you would expect. They are better than regular fritos. Not as good as Chili Cheese Fritos. The gold standard for chips is Salsa Verde Doritos. Needless to say, these fall short of that gold standard.
Rating: Par
Horton Hears a Who
An elephant discovers that there is an entire world living on a piece of pollen. He goes on a journey to find a proper home for these tiny people, on top of a mountain. The mayor of the tiny world and the elephant communicate back and forth. They both tell everyone of this, and everyone seems to accuse them of being crazy lunatics.
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90210
ever notice on 90210 dylan's dad (josh taylor, you know he was the dad on the hogan family, that show with micheal bateman, i mean jason bateman) died in a car bomb, then on graduation day dylan saw his dad in ghost form. Then during season 10 dylan's dad appears out of nowhere, apparently he assumed a false identity under the witness protection program (because some mob bosses were after him). there's no way that could have been the writers insulting the intellegence of the viewer. i could not live in such a world. so like was Jack McKay's ghost real or not. how can some one be dead, alive and fictional all at the same time? ya know thats some deep existenstial shit. really blows my mind
The Savages
The Savages
R
113 minutes
Laura Linney
Phillip Seymour Hoffman
Philip Bosco
Wendy and John Savage are siblings (Laura Linney and Phillip Seymour Hoffman), they live in New York and Buffalo, respectively. Lenny Savage (Philip Basco), their long estranged father, lives in Sun City, Arizona. Lenny's girlfriend dies and her family kicks him out of her house, primarily for his bizarre behavior. Wendy and John are left taking care of Lenny, eventually they find out he is dying of Parkinson's. They decide to place him an assisted living facility in Buffalo.
Wendy and John are having to live their lives outside of all of this. Wendy is an aspiring playwright with a regular day job. She is the paramour of a married man named Larry. Some drama occurs between her and Larry, which really did not add or take way anything from the film. John is a theater professor, in the middle of writing a book dealing with Bertolt Brecht. He has a girlfriend from Poland, that is until her visa expires. John's problems seem to stem from intellectualizing and suppressing his emotions. Character development is wonderful, you can actually see the metamorphosis of Wendy and John into well-rounded fully-functional adults.
The literary references are a tad esoteric, which some may interpret as pedantic or elitist. The references are completely relevant to the film though, and are not used to obfuscate a lack of content (Matt Damon, Goodwill Hunting). The writer/director of the film (Tamara Jenkins) made a charming, witty and thoroughly engaging film. It's not a snooty avant-garde film, but still there is no denying that it won't appeal to everyone.
Final Verdict: 92 out of a possible 100.
Sidenote: I don't really want to review Michael Clayton. All I can say is its barely good enough for me to recommend.
Rambo 4
RAMBO (4) 1 hr 33 mins
R
Sylvester Stallone
"Fuck the world" -John Rambo
This film really takes me back to a time when I'd watch Rambo marathons on the USA network, as a young lad. I went to the first midnight showing of this movie, trembling with anticipation. The people in the theater were also die hard Rambo fans, cheering and such during the opening credits ("yeah Rambo") and applauding at the end.
John Rambo and some mercenaries go to save missionaries who are captured by the Myanmaran (Burmese) army. Its fairly obvious how events are going to unfold.
There is no heavy metal rock to go along with all the shooting, which would be incredibly crass. Instead, a more generic sounding, slow tempo, symphonic soundtrack (brass and strings).
Stallone is looking really old and haggard, not to mention burnt out. It makes it hard to separate John Rambo from said actor portraying him. Is John Rambo sick of everything, or is Stallone sick of his own life?
I wouldn't have liked this movie if it didn't take itself so seriously. The shameless use of bad action movie cliches. Realistic, yet cartoonish blood and gore of epic proportions, beyond anything I've seen in the last ten years.
David Morrell (All four Rambo films), Sly Stallone, and Art Monterastelli (Seaquest) prepared this smorges board of carnage, brilliance, and pure delight. So drop what your doing, and see this movie right now, so you can honor this distinguished thespian, we call Sylvester Stallone, while he's still with us.
Final Verdict: 98 out of possible 100
Sidenote: Stallone is filming a movie on 2pac and Biggie (Notorious (2008)). To be released in March. No word on that sequal to Over the Top.
Cloverfield (mini-review)
Cloverfield
85 minutes
PG-13
This movie is a non stop thrill ride. It's a Godzilla rip off, which in itself is not a problem. Cloverfield was full of cinematic gimmicks and trickery. It sucks you in, even though it's completely hollow. After the film ends, you are left with an empty feeling, a feeling we are all too familiar with, like after watching Micheal Bay's ejaculate on celluloid (Transformers). It would be unconscionable to recommend this movie to your worst enemy.
Final Verdict: 12 out of a possible 100
