Zombieland 2009

First and foremost, there's a definite genre for this film. I just have no idea what it is. It's not really your typical zombie movie, it's not a dark comedy, not really a drama. More like a mix between all of these. I mean, if you took the zombie's out of the movie and only implied they existed, it'd still be an awesome movie. So let's just get that out in the open up front, first.

Secondly, Ruben Fleischer won an audience award at the Catalonian Film Festival this year for Zombieland, his Directorial Debut. For his first film, it's got the makings of Fight Club cult classic all over it, cigarette burns in the reel included. Well, except the ending wouldn't garner the "huh?" reaction from like most cult films and you could actually understand almost 99 percent of the movie. It just made perfect sense.

This movie is about living, getting by each day, one day at a time in hopes of finding your twinkie. Think of the way the characters are named. They are all named after a place, when they introduce themselves. Columbus and Tallahassee; not a place they've been or where they are from, but where they are going. Tallahassee, because he's just heading there, Columbus is looking to see if his parents are still alive and they live in Columbus, etc.

So Columbus, played by Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland) meets Tallahassee  who's played perfectly by Woody Harrelson (if you don't know who he is, climb out from under that rock) and immediately hit it off by hating each other, but at least tolerating one another. Then both of them meet Witchita  (Emma Stone, Superbad and Little Rock) Abigail Breslin (who was the voice of Rosebud in Air Buddies and started her career in the movie Signs) and have a very easy time hating both of them. 

 

The feeling's mutual. Tallahassee has no twinkie, no guns,  no car and Columbus has no girl to push the hair behind her ears. The girls are heading toward Pacific Playland because there are no zombies there. Everyone has a place in their mind that has no zombies; the fact is there's no such place.  In the movie, there is no such place where zombies don't run rampant killing everyone.

Anyway, Bill Murray pulls off a fantastic cameo and overall the sound track is the best since Forrest Gump, in my mind. These are the two most memorable things in the movie.

Unlike most movies I review, I will not ruin this for anyone. You really should see this. There's a little gore in the beginning, and the occasional freakish zombie eating intestines, but it's really not enough to hurt the experience. You have to see this movie if only for the Bill Murray cameo.

Here are the numbers:

Random yet wonderfully played Bill Murray cameo: 10. He's fantastic.

Violence: 8.0. There's a lot of it but it doesn't take away from the film at all.

Ridiculousness: 7.0. The entire premise is ridiculous that we'd be taken over by zombies, but if we were, I'd hope to be on the road with these guys.

Not seeing Emma stone at least partially nude: 5.0. I could live with out it, but it would have given the movie some flair.

Tits and ass: 6.0. There are tits and ass, but usually they are being eaten by zombies.

Creative euphemisms for sex: 6.0. There were some, but definitely not enough.

Waiting for the evil zombie music: 8.0. No evil zombie music, thank god.

Watching a geek become and then live the life of a hero: 8.0. Columbus is awesome. He's my hero, but he didn't grab Witchita's hair and pound her from behind.

Grand total of 7.25. 

 

I love this film. I really do. I believe this will come down to be one of the best cult classics of all time.

Land of the Lost 2009

Anyone looking to watch Land of the Lost (LOL for short) for serious acting, stunning visual effects or witty comedy, stop right here. It's just not what you are going to get, so lighten up. Nobody liked this film. I didn't like this film, but just like a child that throws food all over the house, you still love that child and keep trying to force feed it asparagus and carrots and everything else that's good for it.

And that's just what we do with Will Ferrel's odd choice of movies here. Sometimes we're proud of Will's movies. We take them home, love and cherish them and put them in spots of honor in our movie collection. Other times we put them out for the yard sale the day after we buy them or just bring 'em back to where we bought them.

Once you get past the extremely low-budget look to the movie (which is sort of appropriate for LOL anyway), the ridiculous pretense (whoops, which is also sorta, um, like the original series), and the crappy acting (I think we're on a roll here), it's actually kinda fun to watch.

Will Ferrel plays Dr. Rick Marshall, a quantum paleontologist who's sole claim to fame was being ripped a new asshole by Matt Lauer (played by himself) on the eve of the release of his new book, as he tries to explain how time warps are necessary to solve our fossil fuel problem. Matt Lauer plays a fantastic nasty version of himself and eventually uses a fire extinguisher to subdue Marshall.

Cut away three years later, Marshall is in a class of some kind teaching kids about Tachyons when in comes Anna Friel playing the part of Holly Cantrell, Marshall's biggest and only fan. Coincidentally she's hot. She convinces him to fix or repair the tachyon machine and finds that the one place that has the best place to find tachyons is in Devil's Canyon. Or something like that. This is where they meet Danny McBride playing the character of Will Stanton, the redneck

Regardless of what you think about the movie, the cinematography was actually pretty well done. The script was actually pretty funny if you pay close attention to what Will Ferrel is actually saying everytime something happens.

"Captain Kirk's Nipples!"

"What a piece of crap! The machine, I mean, not A Chorus Line. I love Show tunes. They really tell the story of the human condition."

Just totally random weird shit. Completely serious.

Anyway, so Marshall winds up in another time/dimension/place/set with Holly and Will and immediately finds a viking ship and a Cessna. In the home movie he's making he describes Will as "Some trashy trailer park reject that smells like malt liquor and feet..." and Will says "I'm standing right here!".

Okay, not roll on the floor funny, but situationally funny.

Enter Chaka, some form of bipedal life (slightly monkey, kinda human) played Jorma Taccone who as it happens  to understand english within about 10 minutes of being introduced in the movie. Totally feasible, of course.

Anyway, enough of the plot. The script doesn't really put a lot into it, so why should I. The rest of the movie is fun to watch and the dialogue is actually pretty funny mostly. Leonard Nimoy plays a cameo, which gives some amount of life to the movie.

Here are the numbers.

Overall Ridiculousness: 7. Could have definitely been more ridiculous. For instance, there could have been midgets. No midgets in this film except possibly Chaka.

Violence: 3. No violence, really, except the dinosaur stalking Marshall, but that was just funny.

Tits and Ass: 0.0. None. Except for maybe some indirectly at the very end which I won't talk about because I don't want to completely ruin the movie (as if I could).

Random dialogue: 6.0. Funny enough to keep the movie along in between smoking your crack pipe to stay interested.

Completely random number: 4.

Overall 2.5.   Funny, bad effects, somewhat good dialogue, and Anna Friel in a wife beater and shorts. Meh. It' was altogether mediocre but I liked it about as much as I liked the original series, which, mind you, sucked.

Quantum Leap: in 144 words.

Quantum Leap: Sam jumps person to person for 5 years, gets laid once? 

 

Turns out was just god's mean joke. Jumps forever; Al keeps living. Sucker!

Crank 2: High Voltage 2009

I'd like to personally thank Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the directors of Crank High Voltage (aka, Crank 2), for taking the time and effort it obviously took to incorporate as much tits and ass as humanly possible into a movie that has nothing to do with tits and ass whatsoever. 

 

Watching something like Animal House, or Van Wilder, or any National Lampoon movie since 1983, you actually expect tits and ass. and are then completely disappointed when you get the shaft. You expect it and you get jipped when you get like four seconds of the side of some body-double's boob. Sorta like Crank (the first one, that is).  So tits and ass do not make a mediocre movie into an incredible one, but they certainly do take one's mind off the senile fuck that came up with the premise to the sequel here.

I'm thirty-three minutes into this movie and there's more tits and ass in this movie than the last four movies I reviewed, and most of the porn I don't bother finding any pertinence in, combined. There's fucking, there's spanking, there's nudity, there's strippers, there's jiggly juggliness, there's even hookers and mostly naked chicks with guns running amok. In fact, whenever there's something completely mindless and ridiculous going on, count on naked girls to show up with guns. 

But does this make a good movie thus far? I really think this is what the last movie lacked completely. Maybe the directors felt that too much sexuality in the  first movie might have distracted the casual viewer from the fact that Efren Ramirez (Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite) played a cross-dressing freak and that would draw in audiences all on its own. Instead, now Efren plays the freak's brother, who happens to have something the movie refers to (in big bold letters) "Full Body Tourette Syndrome." Apparently one out of every six billion people have it, and it happens that Venus (Ramirez) just happens to show up on a scooter to rescue Chev (Jason Statham) from being arrested by the police. 

There's nothing wrong whatsoever with Jason Statham's acting, either. I really did enjoy his parts in Snatch, The Italian Job, as well as a few others. Although my review of the first Crank movie was a little rough, this one, I think, might come across a bit more respectful.

But before we get there, let's take a look at the premise:

Three months after his supposed death in the first Crank, Eve Lydon (Amy Smart) has begun pole dancing. Completely coincidental, in fact, that Chev happens upon her in a completely random strip club that he just happened to find out about from a hooker that he saved. But no, life would be so easy if it just followed simple laws of physics. Instead of dying, Chev just sort of bounced off a car, landed on the asphalt and was literally shoveled off the pavement and thrown into a van. When he woke up, it was three months later and he had a plastic heart installed into his body while he was still awake by two surgeons who looked vaguely Asian. Of course, he was required to recharge the battery pack that came with the heart (as he found out by someone who's number he happened to know by heart (get it?) and Dr. Miles coincidentally was a heart transplant expert played marvelously by Dwight Yoakam), and when that got screwed up, he looked for someone to mess with for the rest of the movie that might try to electrocute him. A few someone's, in fact.

Make sense yet? Guy broke the battery to his plastic heart, so he has to keep charging his heart up any way he can. Get it?

So here's Chev running amok and plugging himself into anything with electricity. You are probably thinking to yourself "How many ways could the directors possibly defy the laws of physics and yet make it even somewhat believable?"

It turns out three. Getting tazed, fucking and when the EMT used the paddles were the only three activities (the middle one worked because it generated "friction" and gave a great excuse to watch two people go at it on a horse track) that would not actually kill him outright. Just for giggles, let's see how he tries to recharge:

1. Wiring ignition cables to it.
2. Getting a Jump Start using jumper cables and his tongue
3. Getting tazed
4. Electronic Dog Collar
5. Rubbing up against an elderly woman at a horse track
6. Fucking extravagantly on the horse track itself during the race
7. EMT jumping his heart with paddles.
8. Massive electrical transformers (which, then, also transformed the movie into a really awesome king kong versus godzilla (except with mutated characters) sequence which was hysterically funny)

9. Not so massive electricity transformer on top of an electric pole which nonetheless catches his hair and clothing on fire and causes him to hallucinate that he's screwing Eve and not burning the weird asian hooker that he previously saved at the beginning of the movie. 

By the way, GREAT Cameo by Ron Jeremy playing a raucious picketer in the movie. Very cool. And then we had another great cameo by David Carradine (RIP) who played the 100 year old horny Fu-Manchu Asian man  Poon Dong who actually was the recipient of Chev's heart in the first place.

Okay, so we get past all that to the final big finale of tits, ass, guns, knives, nun-chucks, a random head in a fish tank, nude women, fire, electricity, a pool, gorgeous backdrop and hallucinations and the movie finally ends with Dr. Miles transplanting the heart into a burnt wrapped body during the credits. So not sure how this will work out, whether there will be a Crank 3: Fucking for dear life or not, but I'll be sure to watch it.

So here's the break down:

Tits and ass: 9.9. This is officially the best tits and ass movie I have yet to see that Scarlett Johansson wasn't in.

A completely randomly generated number: 5.1

Overall Ridiculousness: 8.5. This movie was just plain ridiculous, but started making fun of itself about half way through, so that was awesome.

Violence: 7.0: There was non-stop violence, but mostly really ridiculous violence (like sawing off one's own nipple) that was just sort of too stupid to be called violence. 

Violins: 0.0. There were no violins of any type in this movie at all.

Fucking: 8.9 Extremely well done, particularly because it's during a horse race on the horse track while horses are jumping over them in front of thousands of people.

Special effects: 8.0: The cutaways were kinda cool, but there weren't all that many noticeable special effects to draw away from the ridiculousness of the movie.

Random cutouts to completely random situations that were just plain funny as all hell: 8.8. This happened often, they were always ridiculous and funny and lent to a better experience.

So overall I rated this movie 7.025, which is pretty damned good. I really couldn't believe a sequel could be better than the first, but this certainly was.

500 Days of Summer 2009

This was an awkward movie. Picture that one girl you met several years ago, the one that says "we should just be friends" and proves it by fucking you consistently, and leading you on every day toward an end that you know will involve you having the feeling of being shit on by everyone in your life simultaneously.  All while saying, "no really, we're just friends. We shouldn't put a label on this. Honestly, I'm just happy as we are here and now, friends. Wanna fuck?"

Yes, I've been on the receiving end of the Summer (Zooey Deschanel) character. I've been Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) quite a few times in my life. And every single time it's because she had a boyfriend. This movie's no different, really, except the boyfriend doesn't come in until day 460 or so. So at least that lends the character of Summer a tiny bit of credibility. And sure, she was up front in the beginning. First time they talked for more than six seconds, she laid it out (in more ways than one, of course) the way she felt and then proved it by just being as romantic as possible with the shmuck Tom.

And Tom is a shmuck, just like I was, just like you were, just like most nice people are. You might be a shmuck and not even know it. Summer just used Tom until she could find her true love, which, of course, wasn't him. She was practicing. Well good for fucking her.

Let this movie be a beacon. An indicator. If you watch this movie and say "yeah, who needs labels anyway?" then you, my ignoramus dipshit of a reader, are a fucking shmuck.

But aside from that, this was a really well done movie. Usually the skipping from day to day back and forth would aggravate me (much like The Fountain did when I reviewed it) but in this case it was pretty helpful. The scenes skip so you can see where everything was particularly fucked up.

Like for instance, there's a scene where they are in a restaurant. She says "where are we going. what is this?" etc. He says "aren't you happy?" and then a little while into the movie, the same scene, roles reversed, happens in his car. The first one, they are in the process of breaking up, shit sucks, and he has no clue what to do. The second time (which, chronologically is the first time) they are both happy to be a part of each other's life. Stuff like that was pretty cool.

And at the end, of course, just to make this movie rounded out a sappy love flick that's trying not to be a love flick, he gets emotionally mangled by Summer just to bump into a new girl Alison (Rache. Boston). That, of course, worked out great as he poured his soul to her about, guess who? Summer.

Yep, she took that longer than most girls would, but Rachel Boston just literally must of walked off her canceled set of Ex-list onto the set of 500 days of Summer before they shot the scene in the diner, so she wasn't exactly in any rush to go anywhere. She finally smartens up and leaves while he does karoake poorly and drunk, and he bumps into Summer while he's moping at his favorite spot in the park. She's not stalking him, of course. So he tries to get on with his life by going to 10,000 interviews as an architect because that's what he was studying before he wasted several hundred days with Summer. So on the very last interview before he basically has no other place to go, he bumps into a new girl while waiting for the interview. She's interviewing for the same job. Her name is...

wait for it....

Autumn.

Autumn, of course, is the fabulously sexy Minka Kelly who's extensive career thus far includes such renowned movies like Devil's Highway, The Pumkin Karver and... well, this movie. Yeah, I have no idea either, but she's gorgeous.

The particularly interesting thing about the film, the thing that got me, was that the narrator (there's a narrator, and his name is Richard McGonagle, and he's appeared in or done voice-overs for EVERYTHING you've ever seen) actually says at one point "this is not a love story," when, in truth, it was a love story. Like when she said "we should just be friends" and fucked him ass-way-backwards throughout the film.

Alright then. There's my rant of a movie review. Now for some points.

Reality: Horribly bad Karoake done extremely well: 5.4

Tits and Ass: There was absolutely no tits and ass in this movie: 0.1

Masochism: You really like this movie although it hurts like hell to think that the very movie you are watching right this second is actually something you could have written the screenplay for: 7.3

Simulated sex: All sex that appears on your screen, regardless of how real it looks, really is simulated. The shower scene was portrayed rather well, particularly leading up to it parts. 8.1

Visually the movie was very stimulating, shot very well. You can see several shots that really made the film and I was impressed by the overall tone of the movie. 8.2

Aggravated that not only does Zooey look like my ex, but so does the "look-a-like" Kathryn Weisbeck, if not moreso. What, did someone steal my frigging brain for a week? 3.5

That brings us to a total of 5.433. Just a pubic hair over average. I would see it again.

Idiocracy 2006

This work computer is really pissing me off. After a year of using a laptop and getting used to there being a nice little neat touchpad down there in the middle of the keyboard, and having all the keys nice and flat so they don't make noises when you type, I'm lucky I haven't thrown this whole system through a wall yet. ARGH. Which makes writing reviews, by the way, much harder. Fucking shit! I can't even get the stupid spell checker to work on this fucking thing. Argh, I am not in a good place right now.

Well, except for the most ridiculous movie of the year so far, which was Idiocracy. It stars Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph, two people who are stuck together unceremoniously in some weird army experiment. The premise of the movie, is they take two "morons" and stick them in capsules and wake them up a year later.

Well, unfortunately, things go bad somewhere and they wind up being forgotten. 500 years later, in a garbage dump avalanche gone horribly bad (you ever hear of a good avalanche?) Luke Wilson's character winds up in the parlor of Dax Shepard (who's character is a lawyer) while he's taking a dump on his toilet/couch. He freaks out, and goes to a doctor played ingeniously by Justin Long, and winds up in jail for being so smart, basically.

Long story cut way way way...WAAAAAAAAAAY short:

He becomes secretary of the interior. Can you name our secretary of the Interior without looking it up? Exactly. Completely ridiculous eh.

I really don't want to go too much into this one, because although it was funny and very worth my while watching it, I have a splitting headache from laughing so loud at it. I watched the movie right before I watched Eulogy, but I'm still reeling from it.

I'm not going to do my usual breakdown on this one, as it was just too funny to really pay attention to much going on in the film.

So, just this time, go out and rent Idiocracy purely because I told you to. I'll even rate it a random 7.9 for shits and giggles if that makes you feel better about yourself in the morning. It's really really stupid, and that makes it quite funny.

It's especially a good movie to watch if you sit there thinking how bad your life is, and you are completely depressed and stuff.

It's like a paper towel: a quicker picker upper. Yeah.

Eulogy 2004

I've actually seen quite a number of movies over the past couple weeks, but as my computer died on me recently, I've been quite unable to share them with you. So I finally broke into a work computer far enough that it actually plays videos I find online. It's rather dead tonight so I thought I'd share this little gem with you.

If you haven't seen Eulogy yet,  you are certainly missing out on a really fun movie. Technically it's a drama, and there are a lot of serious issues being developed in the story, but really it's a comedy neatly disguised as a drama acting like a comedy laughing at the drama going on in a comedic yet dramatic sort of way. Ish.

The story is simple. Grampa dies and everyone shows up for the funeral, and within seconds you realize no one in the family likes either Grampa or anyone else for that matter, except for the main character Zooey Deschanel who plays Kate Collins, the granddaughter. Apparently she is the only one that liked Grampa. She also narrates the film.

Kelly Preston plays Zooey's lesbian Aunt, who's lesbian feance happens to be none other than Famke Janssen. For those of you who live under a rock, Famke Janssen played Jean Grey in the X-Men movies. And, for those of you who are blind, she's drop dead gorgeous.

Anyways, Ray Romano plays Grampa's son Skip Collins, and he's a divorcee with two sex starved 11 year old boys. How you somehow become sex starved at 11 I have no idea. When I was eleven, I was climbing trees and farting at the next door neighbor's daughter for fun. I wonder what ever happened to that girl...She was so awesome. She liked me. Once she threw an oil filter at my head for no reason at all. It was love at first site. I ripped a tree (it wasn't a big tree, and I was a pretty strong kid at 11) and threw that back at her. I think because it was a couple weeks belated she didn't understand it was retribution for the oil filter thing, so that didn't work too well in the whole "ha, so take that!" department. This went on for days and days until her dog ate her.

Where was I.

Oh yeah, so ya got Kelly Preston and Ray Romano, two very strong actors, and then their sister is played by Debra Winger, who plays a neurotic Alice Collins. Alice is basically the epitome of a (did I already say neurotic?) bad sister; completely judgemental towards Lucy and her lesbian lover (can you just picture Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen triple-tonguing the skin turbans? I can.), who talks so much her husband and kids are literally in fear just thinking about talking.

Rounding out the story is Hank Azaria, another son of Grampa who plays Daniel Collins, who is just brilliant no matter what role he's playing. He plays an obscure adult film star who got his childhood fame by being in some peanut butter commercial. go figure. Hot sticky goo in the face- things just don't change for him apparently.

Regardless. It's a really cute story about how no one really knows what to do and how to react to Grampa being dead, so they just take out all their psychological issues on everyone else in their family.

The whole time you watch the movie, though, all you think about is Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen double-teaming the soft naked enchiladas. No offense, but really. I've literally paid attention to nothing else other than those two and the thoughts of them finding how many licks it takes to get to the center of their vagina pops. I think I have to change my shorts.

But really, things could be worse. Oh, and I just realized that Hank Azaria plays the part of Katey's (Zooey Deschanel) Dad. See, somehow I missed that until just now. Crap.

I think the neatest part of the movie was the cameo by Rene Auberjonois, who was basically famous for playing the part of Odo on Deep Space Nine, among seven  million other tv show appearances. You know he started his career as a voice over on the Jetsons? He was also on the tv show Bensons, which I think he was most famous for, and most recently a role on Boston Legal. Just random filler for this review, basically, but noteworthy nonetheless.

So here's the official countdown:

Thinking of Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen doing the naked bungee noodle slip a dee doo da day- 10.0.

Actually seeing Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen participating in the two-way Indy 69 thousand- 1.0.

Not caring about whether Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen actually do it on screen or not but getting off at the mere thought of it the entire time I watched this movie, thus, missing most of the movie- 10.0

Trying to come up with creative euphamisms for Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen getting it on the lesbian way- 10.0

You know, I really can't stop thinking about Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen lip-locking the fandango buffalo monsters, so I'll throw in another- 10.0

Okay, seriously. This movie was actually very heart warming, and it was awesome to see Debra Winger as a psychotic bitch, but it certainly wasn't anywhere close to as exhilerating as thinking about Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen riding the naked tuna boat to charlieville- 8.0

I really need to stop thinking about Kelly Preston and Famke Janssen. So, in lieu of a reference to lesbian sex, let's concentrate on some other fine aspects of this movie. Like when the two twin hormones freaked out their aunt by ripping into their birthday cake and shaping it like two breasts. That was kinda funny. 5.0

Oh, and when Grampa's wife OD'ed, and they pumped her stomach, Ray Ramano is saying on the phone : "Hey sis, did they puke her? Alright, I'll spread it...Aight, bye...[hangs up phone] She unswallowed."  That was the best puke euphamism of all time. That inspired me to write a love poem about puke a while back. For that line alone, I'll throw in a 7.5

Wishing I was 11 and my aunt was dating a hot lesbian (well, like I said, it wouldn't have really mattered...)- 5

Overall experience- 7

A completely random number I chose because I have to pee-

Which gives this movie a grand total of 7.0.

And just in general, I hope you are not taking 10 to mean "Must See" and 1 to mean "avoid at all costs". It's just a stupid numbering system. I mean, look here, I put 10 this time, and usually I only put 8. I must really be bored.

Mr. Fix-It 2006

So take a wild guess what happens when I send my wife to BockChuster Video to pick up movies? Yep. You guessed right. "Mr. Fix-it." She picked up that and the most recent installment of Desperate Housewives, and Stephen King's Desperation. You think she's trying to tell me something?

I began watching the movie with a hint of skepticism, as it states rather loudly on the cover "...a great date movie." Right off the bat, being a chick flick causes my sphincter to retract, but we won't go there right now.

The main premise of the movie involves a story about this guy who basically charges loser men money to date their ex-girlfriends and show them just how much the women are missing out now that they dumped them. For instance, he dates a girl who wants "Mr. Sensitive" and he becomes a chauvanistic pig. She wants a guy who isn't as jealous as her ex, he makes pretend that he's the most jealous of all people. She wants someone who's considerate, he's an inconsiderate prick. You get the picture.

David Boreanaz, who had roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Bones to name a couple, plays the part of Lance Valenteen, super hero to loser dumped morons who can't keep their women. Alana De La Garza plays Sophia, the ex girlfriend of a client, who meets Lance when he finds her at a local strip club. By the way Alana De La Garza looks good wearing hardly anything at all. Anyways, these two meet and Lance, under the auspices of being "new in town" somehow sneaks his way into her life by, well, basically stalking her at places her ex-boyfriend points out to Lance.

There's a particularly good scene where the dog he "borrows" from the pound where his buddy works winds up licking other dogs' asses while he's trying to hit on Sophia. I also found it particularly fun to watch the dog "daydream" about Sophia's poodle- dogs walking, chasing toys, having a picnic, fucking in the moonlight...it was really romantic. I can see why this is such a good date movie.

Oh, and with all this going on, Lance is hoping that by selling this service, he is able to fix up his beater of a camaro and compete in a street racing competition. Kinda juvenile plot. Speaking of plots.

Tobias, Ronald B. wrote "20 Master Plots." (Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 1993) and in this book described them as:

   1. Quest

   2. Adventure

   3. Pursuit

   4. Rescue

   5. Escape

   6. Revenge

   7. The Riddle

   8. Rivalry

   9. Underdog

  10. Temptation

  11. Metamorphosis

  12. Transformation

  13. Maturation

  14. Love

  15. Forbidden Love

  16. Sacrifice

  17. Discovery

  18. Wretched Excess

  19. Ascension

  20. Descension.

Obviously this was written in 1993, which was a while back, so the author forgot a few that happen to coincide with this movie's review.

21. Visual Masturbation

22. Chick Flick

23. Completely ridiculously faked Italian Accents by real Italian actresses

24. Fucking while completely clothed.

25. Overused video filters.

26. et al.

Just to name a couple. Pick one. I really have no clue what plot line this followed. I really don't think I want to analyze this too much.

Oh, speaking of Alana De La Garza- watching her have an orgasm while grinding Lance while the dog watches, albeit fully clothed, was fucking weird but weird in a kinda hot kinky nice pretty shiny teeth kinda way. There's something about a girl who has a grinding fetish...

Ah... anyways. This movie has all the makings of a great movie- Adults playing Dodge ball, strippers, girls with curvaceous bodies wearing scant bikinis, amateur race car driving, humping dogs, old guys serenading old women...but it lacks some definite block buster features. Like a gag-real. It should be a law that every single comedy slash cute romantic movie should be required to include a gag real in their special features on the DVD. I actually paid for the rental, and I pay for rentals for the fucking gag reels, especially when the movie is less interesting then picking dry skin scabs off my knuckles from the bitter cold weather we've been having up here lately.

Seriously though. This was a "Watch a cute movie, all the while insulting your girlfriend and every member of the opposite sex unbeknownst to them" movie.

I'd like some pizza. And some beer. And I'd like to tickle my wife's feet just for giggles.

Well, I had fun watching the movie, I hardly fast-forwarded through it at all (with the exception of a very poorly done salsa dance scene) and it was actually kinda cute in some respects. Much like wifey and me. Maybe my wife IS trying to tell me something...

So here's the breakdown.

4.5 for tits and ass; there was about thirty-five seconds of anything even remotely close to tits and ass, and half of that time they were fully clothed.

8.0 for fulfilling my fantasy of watching a somewhat unremarkable Italian actress with kinda nice looking breasts grind someone while wearing designer khakis. Did I tell you I knew a girl who used to grind furniture and anything else she could get her crotch on? Yeah, she was fun. A bit hard to compete with a sofa though...

8.5 for having a really wild kinda weird tear-jerking twist at the end that will improve your chances of getting laid on a first date by 381 percent. Or, if you are married, the chance wifey will do the dishes, cook a steak dinner, and perform fellatio on you like a cheerleader.

5.5 on the weirdness scale; mostly for the humping dog at all the weird moments, but unfortunately there wasn't really all that much weird shit going on. The elderly woman saying to another elderly man "I can't wait to check that dipstick" as a sexual innuendo was a bit disturbing...

2.5 for redundant morals and lessons of life and love. There should have been WAY more sex in this movie.

7.5 for the fact that Alana De La Garza looks almost exactly like Liv Tyler with the right makeup and lighting. She could be her sister. That's worth some points right there.

6.0 Inconsistencies; like why is there some random drunk guy in a bar arguing with Sophia? WTF is that all about? And really, why is it that all the plans Lance makes to get the ex-boyfriends back with the girls work??? You mean he never messes things up ever?

1.0 for utter misogyny; Really I think that is shining a very poor light on women in general. But if your chick likes chauvinist pigs or mysogonyst assholes, and you happen to be a big one, then hey- go for it. I mean, the whole premise of the movie is to demonstrate how utterly stupid these women have to be to go back to their ex-boyfriends in the first place. Don't you think they'd have moved on by now and are able to see through a hacker scam?? Don't you think that they are intelligent enough to figure out a scam a mile away, or empowered enough not to automatically fall back to their ex just because some guy turns out to be worse than their ex??

This brings us to the grand total average of 5.4375, which, believe it or not, is only slightly larger than the average... We'll let that one little bit of info go for today

Shaun of the Dead 2004

So I found Shaun of the Dead online tonight somewhere random. I happened to see it and figured, eh, I don't have enough British humour in my life, so why not.

I asked a couple guys in my office about it, they said it was a spoof on the dawn of the dead movies, and I happen to be an extremely small fan of those movies. What have I got to lose.

Well, it turns out not much. The entire film was laced with many different horror movie devices like weird screetchy sounds, zoomy camera effects and some pretty weird situations; all of which wound up being pretty funny. Not Funny funny, but British humour funny, which, technically, isn't really all that funny if you don't laugh at anything that doesn't involve farting in most movies.

For the most part, though, the movie was done pretty well. I don't have much to write about it, but as for horror movie spoofs, I guess I'd give this one an overall rating of 6.5. That's a totally random nonsensical number I just figured I'd throw out there; much like this movie's attempt at making death, blood, gore, zombies, and killing your own mother...funny. Woo hoo!!!

No really, see this one. It was fun to watch.

The Fountain 2006

Very interesting concept. But before I go there, I have to say something. I love almost every movie Hugh Jackman has been in, except for maybe Van Helsing. That kinda sucked. Sword Fish was somewhat tolerable mostly because he was in it. And, even though this movie sucked ass horribly, I do have to admit that Jackman played his role superbly. This movie could have sucked ass way more had someone of less talent taken the lead role.

You know Hugh's been acting since 1994? That's over 13 years he's been acting now. It only took him six years to land the role of his life as Logan (Wolverine) in the X-Men franchise. So half of his acting career he's been holy shit famous. Ain't that a hoot?

Anyways, I'm going to watch this movie now and come back on later and finish my review. I probably won't finish it in the next 45 minutes before I leave for home, mostly because I don't think I'll be fast forwarding through this one.

(continued)

Okay, it took me a couple days to watch it a couple more times, because honestly, it's a great movie about...I have no fucking clue. Darren Aronofsky is the director of this film. He was made mediocre by his attempt at film in 1998 with a completly obscure film called "Pi" which no one saw at all. In fact, you can still find a perfectly brand new rental copy of it at your local CockBuster Video store if you look hard enough. Not a scratch and the movies been in rental since 1998 or so.

But I haven't got a single clue what The Fountain is about. Literally. I kinda got the idea that it's about some guy who finds the tree of life and stabs it and drinks from it's milky sap and turns into a plant.

But you don't get that till the last 10 minutes.

The rest of the film is caught somewhere between the invasion of south america by the conquistadors in the 1500's and present. Jackman happens to be one of them, and modern day where Jackman is some sort of doctor who experiments on animals finding cures for diseases etc. We all assume he just lived that long to be here five hundred years later, but I really don't know for sure if that's what happened. Then while those two magnificently boring plots are taking place in the movie, we switch back to Jackman as some bald headed Harikrishna who is bent on fucking this poor tree till it's dead. For dramatic affect, he is surrounded by really bad effects.

And to make matters just more interestingly confusing, It seems they are all taking place at the same time and Rachel Weisz is somehow involved. Rachel Weisz played the Angela Dodson/Isabel Dodson in Constantine, and most recently starred in the Box Office Flop Eragon as Saphira. You might also remember her as the extremely gorgeous Evelyn Carnahan in the Mummy series (The Mummy, 1999 and The Mummy Returns, 2001).

I was at a loss to really understand the movie as it was a bit choppy, and the fact that there were basically three plots going on at the same time with no end or middle or beginning to any of them, but I bet if I watch it about another 100 times I might pick up some subtle plot points that I might have missed the first two times I saw it over the last couple days.

I didn't even fast forward through it, and I still didn't get most of it.

I feel so unintellectual now.

So, here are the results:

Tits and Ass, 0.0. There are no tits or ass of any kind in this movie.

A clue, 0.0. As in, I kinda like to have some fucking clue as to what the fuck I just saw, and I really fucking don't have one.

Satisfying my fantasy of watching some guy's wife die, but maybe she really didn't die, and hey, is he dead anyways, no wait, is he alive? 5.5.

Special effects, 2.0. It reminded me of movies made in the fifties with guys in scuba gear growling and tearing apart plastic submarines in the director's pool.

Getting the feeling that Darren Aronofsky is on some serious crack, 8.5

Watching a movie to "experience it" regardless of plot line or dialogue, 1.0.

Violence, fight scenes, etc, 2.0. Not too much gore, which is good, but in this movie, just makes it worse. At least some gore would have made it more interesting.

Holding my breath to see if  they could get Rachel Weisz naked, 0.0.

Which leaves us with a small movie case vibrating on the floor in fright with a rating of 2.125, which also happens to be my all time lowest rating for any movie except for one.  Mel Gibson's Apocalypto wasn't rated at all, mostly because I only use a scale of 0 to 10 and I never reviewed it.

Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny 2006

I stumbled upon the Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny movie online somewhere. Can't recall where exactly. I'm really glad there are shitty copies of shitty movies on the internet, else I'd actually spend money renting them and thus waste my time watching them in the full hi-fi hi-def version that the director intended when they wasted the hundreds of thousands of dollars it took to make movies such as this. 

I have to admit, I was in a pretty good mood. I found Star Wars parts 1 and 2 as well as Cruel Intentions (a classic!) all online to view. Of course, mind you, no online version will ever come even remotely close to DVD quality, but you can definitely get the picture (no pun intended).

The one good factor about this movie is the fact that Meatloaf is in it. Typically, any movie whatsoever (like Fight Club, for instance) where Meatloaf plays any role, that movie is a fucking great movie. I would consider this Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny movie to be atypical in that respect as it sucked the dirtiest part of a dog's ass.

I saw Nacho Libre recently, and was a little tipsy so it was kinda fun to watch, but sober and working, anything with Jack Black in it is kinda boring. Again, there are exceptions to every rule, and King Kong was that exception: it was awesome; even with Jack Black playing a lead role.

I like Jack Black; when he finds Sasquatch during the mushroom scene, it's actually pretty funny. What's even more redeeming is that Jack Black starred on Yo Gabba Gabba and Sesame Street and was actually pretty damn cool.

Absurdity, 10

Extremely bad singing, 1.0

Extremely bad acting, 1.0

Extremely bad music, 1.0

Unbelievably bad overall feeling like I just wet myself, 1.0

Living vicariously through another fat person and their bad singing/songwriting, 3.5

Tits and Ass, 0.0, are we in grade school or what?

Having a Bong of Destiny at the end, 9.0

Bong of destiny or no bong of destiny at the end, it doesn't help this paltry rating of 3.3 for this movie. 

Whether it be my general mood today, or the fact that I've gotten about four hours of sleep in the past three days, I can't say I really enjoyed this movie. I absolutely love and respect Jack Black, but this movie just didn't do it for me at all. Maybe someday I'll do another review after watching it again.

Crank 2006

This was the most absurd movie I've ever seen, and the most unrealistic as well. It was like watching a porn where no one fucks at all. Well, except for when Jason Statham fucks Amy Smart against a post office box on a public street. That was a good concept, but there could have been more tits, if you ask me. The Movie was by far the worst example of how to do an action flick.

Here's the premise. The main character is hooked onto some fucked up crack that (oh, this is good) supposedly affects his adrenaline system so badly that he needs to keep moving and getting an adrenaline rush or he'll die.

So, basically, the movie is "How many ways can we possibly get someone to get an adrenaline rush and do it as tastelessly as possible?"

It gets completely ridiculous. I normally don't like stupid fucking movies like this and this movie is no exception. The gore is done badly, the violence is meaningless at best, and it's completely unrealistic.

I mean, yeah, I can believe someone is going to dive out of a helicopter to their death, choke and kill someone half way to the ground (because they ain't gonna die anyways from impact) and call the girlfriend on their cellphone on the way down to tell her they love her.

Not.

But there is one single redeeming factor in all of this:

The guy drives a car through a mall. That hasn't been done this well in any movie since the original Blues Brothers movie, and it was done brilliantly in Crank, but it was rather short. When the car winds up sideways on an escalator, that was kinda cool. Unfortunately, they really didn't play it up too much else it might have been actually fun to watch. Not only that, it could have been the cornerstone of the movie, which would have made it at least somewhat tolerable to watch.

So to the list.

Fuck factor, 3.5. Soft core porn is more interesting to watch because at least there's more tits in it.

Tits and Ass 4.0, there were some here and there, but it was so shrouded by relentlessly bad acting and violence; mostly bikini's anyways.

Having a copy in widescreen available at the rental store 3.0; didn't make much difference, it sucked on widescreen too.    

Violence 8.0, it wasn't really all that well done, but it was done as extreme as they could make it without making you puke. Really choppy sequencing.

Editing 3.0, It's not that hard to put together a shitty movie, but it's really difficult to make a shitty movie good in editing; they didn't bother trying, obviously.

Fulfilling my fantasy of watching Amy Smart get fucked on a Mail Box in front of 1000 gawking passersby 7.0.

(I loved her in the Butterfly Effect, but I didn't need to see Jason Statham's ass for it.)

Cool shit factor 6.0, okay, some of the effects were interesting, but hardly worth mentioning.

Fast Forward Factor, 5.0, If I have to fast forward through half of the movie just to keep from falling asleep...

For a grand total of 4.94, rounded up, makes 4.9 out of 10. I can't even give it a five. That would be way too generous.

Little Miss Sunshine 2006

Now here is a fucked up movie. Steve Carell (Bruce Almighty, Year Old Virgin, the Daily Show, The Office) plays the role of the suicidal gay uncle who unsuccessfully tries to off himself by slitting his wrists when a love of his falls apart. Greg Kinnear (Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, You've Got Mail, As Good As It Gets) plays the dad in the family; he's  some kinda weirdo success motivator who's ironically completely unsuccessful himself. He can't get a book deal to save his life.

The brother, played by Paul Dano (Emperor's Club, The Girl Next Door, Fast Food Nation) took a vow of silence until he gets into the air force to fly jets when he's eighteen. Funny part is he was 23 when the movie was made and plays a 15 year old. How fucked up is that. Alan Arkin (everything since 1963) plays the grandfather who is a heroin snorting fuck nut. Throw all this together around the cutest little girl  in the whole wide played by Abigail Breslin (Signs, Raising Helen, Air Buddies) and you've got Little Miss Sunshine.

So, Carell winds up moving in with his sister (the mom of the little girl, played by Toni Colette, who, other than being gorgeous and talented, has done nothing more remarkable than Shaft for several years) for a while to recover from his suicide attempt.

The little girl finds out she won a beauty contest, but it's in California, 800 miles away. To make a long but quirky story short, every body hops in a bus, drives out to California, and the Grandfather dies on the way, overdosing on heroin. The most fucked up part of the entire movie is that the grandfather was helping the little girl work on her "routine", which turns out to be a strip tease in front of a bunch of snobby beauty pageant white trash who stop her before it gets creepy.

Best line in the movie:
"I dedicate this to my grandfather."
"Oh? Where is he?"
"Oh, he's in our trunk..."

So I spoiled it for you completely, but it was worth it. I can now say I fulfilled my asshole quota for today.

Tits and Ass quota 0.0. None at all.

Weird factor, 9.5, the seven year old strip tease thing was fucked up. Almost couldn't watch it, but they stopped it before it got creepy.

Plot, very fun to watch, 8.5

Fulfilling my white trash fantasy, 2.0, none at all. The wife was kinda trashy, but eh.

Sex and Violence, 1.0, no and no.

Old creepy guy factor 9.5, way creepy.

Hysterically funny people known for their comedy playing completely unfunny characters, 9.0

Accurate categorization of a comedy, 1.0. It's a drama. Not really funny at all.

Although I really did enjoy the plot, I was kinda creeped out by the weird seven year old strip tease thing ending especially, so I have to give this movie a horrid rating of 5.0. As usual, I am being quite generous.

The Last Kiss 2006

You know the lead guy from Scrubs? His name is Zach Braff. Well he did another movie (other than Garden State, that is) about guess what? Yeah, relationships, no kidding. How surprising. The only difference in the movie versus Scrubs is he isn't narrating the movie. Not that there's anything wrong with that; I am a great big fan of Scrubs. But it's nice to not hear his nasally 'I love Raymond' voice tell me how relationships should work or shouldn't work out. I mean, he did dump the blonde whack job with the gorgeous ass the night of his best friends wedding rehearsal. Dumb ass.

Anyways, the movie is a drama about Michael fucking another woman (Rachel Bilson who is ten years younger than him) while his girlfriend (played by Jacinda Barrett) is three months pregnant with his child; using the excuse that he's 30 and scared. In the midst of all of that, his other friends are going through fucked up relationships, and it turns out his girlfriend's mother cheated on her husband a few years back, so really no one can help this guy with his issues.

It's actually a pretty cute movie, to be honest with you. But not so cute that I'm going to take more than five minutes to review it or write more than two paragraphs about it. End result: Chick flick that will turn most straight women to be lesbians because they will have an epiphany that all men suck dog's asses.

So on a scale of one to ten:

Tits & Ass, 6.5 (A couple really pg-rated but very hot naked fuck scenes)

Gorgeous women, 5.5 (Eh, so so. No ass.)

Plot, 6.5 (Kinda predictable, even though it was cute)

Cinematography, 5.5 (Nothing really all that special)

Who's fucking who factor 7.5

Midgets 0.0. Absolutely no midgets. Really exhausting.

Fulfilling my fucking college chicks fantasy, 7.5 (eh, it could have been better. the girl could have been taller, cuter, and with a better ass)

How much of a shmuck can a character be portrayed as, 9.0

For a completely unimpressive grand total of 6 out of 10.

Dream Land 2019

Seriously, if you haven't seen this movie, stop what you are doing- stop working, stop fucking, stop smoking weed, stop snorting sugar, stop blowing your boyfriend, your girlfriend, or your boyfriend's boyfriend or whatever, stop driving to the strip joint, stop peeking at your next door neighbor's dogs humping their lawn, stop at the fucking stop sign asshole (for a change!) and stop what you are doing with that chihuahua- and go rent this movie.

It's called Dreamland. It's about this trailer park in who the fuck knows where New Mexico, and involves a very romantic story about these two kids (well, their all 19) that fall in love with each other, a girl that fucks a hippie guy, her dad who lost his wife / her mom...the dialogue in the movie is brilliantly done...

Women especially will love the romance and the story...the way the father talks about his wife that passed away recently...it's beautiful. It's literally poetic. The entire story is nice too. A real tear jerker...

And speaking of jerking: guys will love the breasts. Just...breasts like you can't imagine. (And coming from a life long ass man like myself, that's saying something!) Oh my! And when Audrey trips out on shrooms while she's wearing these tight little blue panties and basically nothing else...both her and the Calista character have the most utterly amazing asses...Just...I have to literally watch this another hundred times.

It's just that the women are TRASHY... and HOT and trailer park'd out. Fucking breasts that will stop the sun from shining on your face from a mile away. Soft supple...oh what memories this movie evokes...

and the entire movie, well, at least 70 percent of the movie, they are both wearing nothing but bathing suits and most of that time is spent in a jacuzzi...

Oh, and seriously though, the cinematography was amazing. Utterly gaped-mouth amazing. The sunsets, the desert in the backdrop, the amazing colors and the way the sun reflected off every inch of their tight lithe lightly bronzed skin...

*sighs*

... that's my review of Dreamland.

So on a scale of one to ten:

Tits & Ass, 7.6 (no nudity at all, really, but tons of wet bikinis) 

Gorgeous women, 8.5 (not Scarlett Johansen, obviously)
Plot, 8 (kinda twisty at the end)
Cinematography, 8.5 (un real)
Weird shit factor, 6.5 (bees, electric fences, MS, some references)
Location location location, 7 (gorgeous, but not the best of all time)
Jokes and laughs, 4 (It is a drama after all)
Fulfilling my trailer park trash fetish, 9.5
 

For an impressive grand total of 7.5 out of 10

Beer League 2006

I watched Beer League the other night and let me just say that watching a movie where Ralph Macchio is swearing is like having your mother critique your sexual performance while she's smoking pot with your family's priest who happens to he having rather copious intercourse with the next-door neighbor's goat; now picture that with everyone involved wearing stiletto heels. Eh, close enough.

It's just weird. And before you start knocking Ralph Macchio, he only really took about 5 years off in the mid ninetees, and other than that, he's pretty much been working on and off for the past 26 years. Sure, he hasn't got a ton of noticeable work to show for lately, but Beer League was actually a pretty damn fun movie to see him come back to.

Basically, the entire movie is about this guy Artie DeVanzo (Artie Lange) who is a pretty hardcore loser who happens to have this utterly cute little snatch patch of a girl Linda Salvo (played by Cara Buono) who has the nicest ass I think I've seen on film since Scarlett Johannsen's ass in Match Point (which as always was amazing...).

Artie belongs to a softball team on a league in his local new jersey town, and, after initiating a rather retardedly fought skirmish during their first game, are told if they don't beat the other team by the end of the year, they can find a new league.  The first thing you notice when you watch this movie, is the completely random assortment of actors. Like Jim Breuer for instance, who is kinda somewhat ishy famous from Saturday Night Live; he played a brilliant role as the asshole "Football Guy". He was completely as irritating as I've ever seen him in anything else he's ever done (not that he's done all that much, of course).

And then there's Seymour Cassel, who plays the pitcher on their team, and is the glue that holds the team together.  His best line in the movie was "I've fucked guys bigger than you in prison!" Seymour here has had quite the impressive resume as far as things he's done, as he's been acting in small roles since 1959 mostly on tv shows. Seymour is one of those awesome actors who ya know who he is, just don't know where the fuck from. And as it turns out, he's from every fucking thing that's been on tv in the past 50 years. Go figure. You might also have seen him (if you looked really closely, that is) in Life Aquatic (with Bill Murray). That was a very cool movie. I like anything done by Focus Films personally.

So where were we. Ralph Macchio plays Artie's...cousin was it? I dunno, but Artie is his best man in the wedding in the movie. And somewhere between playing horrible softball and smoking and drinking non-stop, Artie decides to toss "Maz" (Macchio) a bachelor party. Now, I've been to a few bachelor parties in my time, but when you have one that includes an "erotic dancer" who can fling ping pong balls from her pussy across the room as an extra feature?! Now that's a fuckin bachelor party.

Of course, it was somewhat made for tv, kinda, so you won't find really all that much tits and ass anywhere; although Artie's mom (who was played BRILLIANTLY by Laurie Metcalf who was the unfortunate soul unlucky enough to have her career defined in the nineties by being Rosanne's beaten down sister in the "Rosanne" sitcom) interrupting Artie constantly mid-coitus is fantastic.

The highest marks in the movie have to go to Cara Buono who played the part of Linda Salvo, Artie's girlfriend. Anyone who can act the role of someone actually interested in Artie, that fat fuck herpes infested retard of a person, deserves a fucking oscar.

Oh, and by the way, lastly. I have no clue where this came from, but this movie is the first one that I've seen that has more than one herpes references than anything I've ever seen. Dennis Mangenelli, played by Anthony DeSando (did some soprano stuff several years ago, etc...) starts out with herpes, apparently, then fucked Artie's girlfriend 2 years before he met her, so she has it, and then artie now has it, and of course she had some random affair with Tim, who play the token black guy by Jerry Minor...

I know almost a third of everyone reading this (statistically speaking) has some form of herpes, but do we need to make it cool all of a sudden? I thought that was a little weird that most of the main cast of characters wound up getting herpes in the movie...

So on a scale of one to ten:

Laughs, a pretty impressive 8 (mostly because of Macchio)
Tits and Ass, 4 (four hookers makes not a t&a movie)
Violence, 1, duh.
Piss your pants rating, 4
Obscure people in the movie, 9.5
Plain weird shit, 6 (mostly Seymore Cassel's script)
Sports in a movie about a sport, 3 (softball really isn't a sport, and Artie Lange had a stunt double throw every ball)

Total points is 35.5, divided by 8 is 4.43ish...

Overall rating (lessee, carry the six, divide by eight...)

4.5.

Never judge a movie by some stupid rating system. I thought it was good for a mid week movie rental, personally.