A Slight Change

In honor of my birth month, and the favorite Irish holiday contained within it, I have undertaken a slight redesign of the site. So, here's to the freshness of Spring and men in funny green hats!

Speed Reviewing Made Possible by Netflix

I'm always a little late to catch onto trends, be they good or bad ones. So it was with Netflix. Everyone talked it up to me, told me how great it was. Anyway, I guess one day not long ago Kelley and I decided we weren't going to take any of Blockbuster's bate and switch bullshit anymore and joined up with the online video store. Truly I haven't the slightest idea why I resisted it this long. It's a good deal, and a great way for us to get back to movie watching. We were probably averaging half a dozen (perhaps a a few more) rentals from Blockbuster a year. Just thinking about going to the video store was enough to make me not want to watch a movie. It didn't help that I became disgusted everytime I actually managed to get to Blockbuster and peruse the aisles of garbage that Hollywood was cranking out. I guess we needed a reboot of sorts. It's refreshing to select and arrange the movies we are interested in seeing from the comfort of our home. Even the ones we aren't sure about we put in the queue. What have we got to lose? You get to keep the movies as long as you want, and you pay a flat monthly fee. Trust me, we are getting our money's worth. We probably average 2 movies per week, and at $10 bucks a month that ain't bad. It beats the hell out of Blockbuster's $5 something per movie plus whatever restocking fee (read late fee) they charge you for keeping the movie too long. By the way, whatever happened to NO MORE LATE FEES? Remember that?

So, enough with the Netflix sales pitch (I promise I am not being paid for this, but maybe I should be). The whole purpose of this entry is to say that I am viewing movies at too fast a rate to actually review them all in detail. So...I have decided to do a short write up on each movie. Nothing in depth. Just short and sweet. I am going to use a five star system, five stars being the highest rating a movie can receive, one star being the lowest. Dig? Here we go. I'm going to catch you up with what we have seen so far.

Like I said, Kelley and I sat down one night and just started chunking movies into our queue, no holds barred. What follows represents a pretty random order and selection process. We take them in whatever order they come. We like to be surprised.

First up:

The Forbidden Kingdom

This is a Kung Fu movie in the vein of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but not quite as serious. Jackie Chan and Jet Li star together in this comedic approach to Chinese mythology. The cinematography and design of the film is breathtaking. Li and Chan are hilarious as a reluctant team of immortal demi-God like heroes on a path to help a boy free a China held in captivity by another demi-God tyrant, and at the same time find his way home. This movie is definitely worth a watch, if not just for the humor. Rent it. You won't be disappointed.

Score: 3/5


Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Elizabeth: The Golden Age continues picks up where 1998's Elizabeth left off. It tells (loosely) the story of England's Queen Elizabeth I, and her struggles to hold her religiously torn country together while the threat of a Spanish invasion looms on the horizon (literally!). The movie's art design, set design, costume design, acting, and cinematography are all masterfully handled. The movie, however, suffers from a flawed, lumbering, and historically inaccurate script. It is a decent movie. I didn't feel particularly strongly either way about it. It is simply...average. See for yourself.

Score: 3/5


The Spiderwick Chronicles

There's really not much to say here. The story is a kid's yarn, and not very memorable. The effects are well done, and the movie is a cute little story to watch for frivolous entertainment. If it came on tv, I dare say that I would watch it again. Not bad. Then again, it really is hard to find good fantasy in any form. Especially after the precedence that Peter Jackson set with his Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Score: 3/5


Miller's Crossing 

The Cohen brothers are hit or miss for me. I hated Burn After Reading. I disliked the careless approach to violence in Fargo, but I loved The Big Lebowski. I thought No Country For Old Men was a fine movie with a shitty ending, and I thought O' Brother, Where Art Thou? was pretty dang funny. I had been wanting to see Miller's Crossing for years, but it was just one of those things that always gets pushed off for something else. So it was with great trepidation (considering the last Cohen movie I saw was Burn After Reading- spit!), though, that I finally sat down to watch the almost classic Miller's Crossing.

All I can say is that it blew me away. It is modern noir at its finest. The characters are real and well developed. The acting is terrific and the direction is perfect, but the story shines in this unusual take on the gangster genre. I already own this movie, not two weeks after seeing it (thanks Jane!). If that doesn't tell you enough, then you are hopelessly clueless and need to go brush up on your reading comprehension.

Score: 4/5



Ghost Town

My dad recommended this movie to Kelley and I. She didn't need to be nudged. She is a big fan of the original The Office and its star Ricky Gervais. What can I say? I didn't think I would like it, but I did. It was funny and not at all deep. Pretty predictable Hollywood storyline, but not without merit. Plus Téa Leoni is hot!

Score: 3/5




10, 000 BC

Wow. Can you say "Intriguing idea gone terribly wrong"? Roland Emmerich conceived and directed 10, 000 BC, and it's not hard to see where his influences lie. The action director clearly has been influenced by books like Fingerprints of the Gods, which is not only evident here but in 1994's Stargate as well. And it could have been so good, if it hadn't been so poorly executed. Look for the scene at the beginning when the Dreadlock tribe is attacked by the Eastern horsemen (I think they called them four legged demons). The scene is almost stolen shot for shot from John Millius' Conan the Barbarian (where the snake cult bad guys attack Conan's village and murder his parents). Well, it wasn't so bad that I felt cheated, but it was pretty cheesy.

Score: 2/5




The Duchess

This movie is a great example of a true story that really didn't need to be told. I found myself wondering by about half way through the movie all the way to the end "What the heck is the point?". Yeah, life was crappy for women before women's suffrage came about. Woop de doo. We know that. Tell us an interesting story!

The acting is fine here. There's nothing wrong with the camera work or the design of the film. The story is just a total bore.

Score: 2/5
 
Fire and Ice

I only gave this movie two stars because it should really be judged in the context of the time that it came out. This is one of those cult classic '80's movies that I somehow missed. But by the time I caught up with it, it was impossible for me to see it without judging it too harshly. This is a grown up, Heavy Metal-esque He-Man movie. The story is stupid. The rotoscoping animation that Ralph Bakshi is infamous for is terrible. The film score and wooden acting only add to the inadvertent laughs. Even Frank Frazetta's incredible art work can't save this movie from itself. Did I mention that the story was the most idiotic attempt at fantasy that I have ever seen on screen? Even Beastmaster beats out this stinker. Trust me, this is only for fans of nostalgia and die hard fantasy buffs (that includes you nerdy Dungeons and Dragons types).

Score: 2/5

More to follow. I've already seen another one this weekend, but I don't have the energy to write about it.

Whew!

Kirk Out. (finally)