Rocky Balboa

I have a quick review for the new Rocky movie.

I wasn't originally going to see Rocky Balboa. Instead, I was thinking of seeing Eragon, the new fantasy movie. However, I started reading some guys saying it was one of the worst movies of the year... the general consensus seemed to feel this way. On the other hand, Rocky Balboa was getting good reviews, so I went to see that.

This movie takes place after Rocky V, and about four years after the death of Adrian. I read that originally Adrian was still going to be alive, but Stallone didn't think that gave the movie enough power, so he rewrote the script where she was dead. It was this that really really helped the movie. Her being dead created so much more emotion than I think would have happened had she been alive in the movie. It was made the movie more than a simple retread on tired ground.

Basically, Adrian is dead and Rocky is a suffering widow with his son (played by Heroes' Milo Ventimiglia). The big time Heavyweight Champ, Mason Dixon, has no real challengers and is criticized for this. ESPN has a mock computer matchup between the young Balboa and Mason Dixon, and it says that Balboa would win in a match. Rocky feels like getting back into boxing to have something to do, when Dixon's manager and a promoter come up to him saying Balboa and Dixon could have an exhibition match. And so on.

Let me tell you, I like Stallone as much as any action star like Schwartzenegger.... well I guess that's it... I only like Stallone and Arnold, I can't stand Van Damme, Seagal, or Chuck Norris. But I never really thought Stallone had the best acting skills, even after seeing Rocky I and II. I haven't seen Oscar, which I heard he is good in, but I have seen a lot of his action movies, and he's an action star, not a real actor. But he wowed me with this movie. He has some unbelievable monologues in this movie which he delivers with such umph. He was truly great in this movie. The other actors are pretty good, though I'm still not sold on Milo Ventimiglia.

The presentation for the boxing scene itself is great too. Michael Buffer, as well as the regular HBO PPV boxing commentators are there, and it's a lot of fun, especially seeing the contrast between now and Rocky I which didn't have all the flash and pop of a modern boxing match. As you might expect, the boxing match itself is pretty damn good as well. I really didn't know who was going to win, but the result makes the most amount of sense.

The movie isn't perfect. There might be a couple too many monologues for the movie's own good. All the main characters have their own massive speech or two or three, and that can get wearing as I prefer some subtlety, instead of raw emotion constantly getting rammed down my throat. But that's Rocky, and I don't think it really detracted from the movie at all. There's also an incredibly annoying scene in a bar near the beginning of the movie concerning some trashy bar denizens and Rocky and buying a round of beers that I didn't like for how forced it seemed.

I was not a big fan of any of the Rocky's that I have seen, but this one really blew me away. I just really appreciated how it tied the series all together. It took a somewhat pulpy movie series and gave it a truly emotional strong ending. Now for Rambo 4.

Apocalypto

Apocalypto, as you probably know, is the latest by Mel Gibson, a film about a period near the end of the Mayan civilization. The plotline (THERE ARE SPOILERS) is as follows: There are these happy-go-lucky village folk living their lives when warriors from the city come and ransack the village, kidnapping some and killing the rest. The kidnapped are herded back to the city where they are to be sacrificed to the Mayan gods, as the religious people believe this will make things better for the Mayans, as times were quite rough. Well, the main character, Jaguar Paw, escapes after killing the lead warrior's son, and the chase is on.

END SPOILERS

If you read that, you can see it is a pretty neat backdrop for a movie. That was what drew me. There aren't too many Mayan movies out, and this is very well done. To be honest, it was a lot of fun... until the end. But I'll get to the end in a bit. It is adventurous, violent, and intense. There is very good acting, and it is quite exciting. I had somewhat feared that the chase scene was going to be very boring. I mean, how exciting could running through the woods be? But I was wrong, it stays fresh throughout.

The ending I was talking about... woo wee... ok first SPOILERS!!!

Now, when the city warriors invaded the village, Jaguar Paw hides his pregnant wife and child in a small cave in which there is no way out if Jaguar Paw isn't around to get her out. So, she is waiting around down there hoping they are saved. Meanwhile, Paw gets into his hectic run home to be with her again. On the way, it starts raining hard, therefore the cave starts to fill up with water. The wife and child are close to drowning. And then the wife starts pushing out, like she's going into labor. And I start getting really really nervous. No way, this is NOT going to happen... but it does. The camera goes underwater, and bam, out pops a baby (so obviously a doll in this scene). It was so awful, and yet so hilarious. It was absolutely pointless and ridiculous.

That killed the mood of the movie for me. Why was that even in there? Why? It's not enough to have her nearly drown in a cave, for all the intense action scenes with Jaguar Paw, we got to add in this awful birthing scene? You haven't seen anything until you see the scene where the baby pops out. It might be somewhat shallow of me to be mired in talking about this scene, but it was such a terrible scene.

End SPOILERS

So after the above mentioned scene, I was rather lost. I had loved the movie up to that point. I just can't think of a reason for that ending.

But as an action-adventure movie set in a very interesting period, this is a pretty good, fun film. There is a good bit of violence so be ready for that.

Mini DVD Review- Altered

I guess I'll do a small review for a bad movie I just rented.

It is called Altered and it's by the guy that did Blair Witch Project. That's really the only reason I rented it. I wasn't at all expecting a cheesy horror movie, but rather a psychological thriller type. The movie is about a group of guys that kidnap an alien that abducted them and killed on of their friends years before. It's a pretty cool little plot. However, the alien is ridiculous looking, I SWEAR I've seen that same alien in another movie before. The writing is also bad. There is some pretty good gore if that's what you are looking for, and the music is very creepy and well done. Still, it's predictable as any other bad direct to video horror movie. There is one really cool shot at the end of the movie where there are a bunch of aliens climbing the walls of the house the main character lives in, so he blows the house up, and it shows the house blow up, and the camera pulls out to show the spaceship above the house (which was a pretty nice ship) retreat and zoom off into space.

So in conclusion, Altered, while with some pretty neat moments, is a pretty bad movie.

Fur

Fur, a movie by Steven Shainberg (Secretary), is a fictional biopic on the photographer Diane Arbus. The fictional biopic thing is what interested me the most. It's not actually about Diane Arbus, but a bunch of made up events that might have pushed her to make her superb photography. Fur stars Nicole Kidman as Diane Arbus and Robert Downey Jr as her hypertrichosis-stricken neighbor one floor up. Hypertrichosis is the "werewolf syndrome" where you grow hair uncontrollably all over your body.

When I first saw Robert Downey's character in this movie, I instantly thought about Chewbacca, he is THAT hairy. And yes, there is an extended, painful to watch shaving scene. He is just flowing with hair. I looked on wikipedia, and apparently there are severe cases where people look like that. So there you go. I normally love Robert Downey Jr, but man did he ever send me over the edge with this movie. He talks in this pretentious soft voiced whisper the whole movie, which might be attributed to his dying lungs, but was still nevertheless incredibly annoying. He's also not a very good person over all in this movie, though his characters' main reason of being is to awaken the artist within Arbus.

This movie is very arty, much more so than any movie I have seen in a while. There is also a lot of weird to it, a lot of in-your-face nudity and circus freaks. It wasn't overly artistic to detract from the movie, and really, that added to it and made it more like the fantasy biopic I was expecting.

Spoilers!!

Diane Arbus and the hairy man start hanging out a lot, and eventually Arbus' husband gets angry and suspicious, and it comes to a head at their anniversary party. Arbus tells her husband that she is going to end this once and for all, and then goes upstairs and shaves the hairy man in the scene I mentioned before. This scene was over the top, as with every piece of skin she uncovers, she looks at it in wonder, as if she's never seen a leg before. Finally, he's shaven and then they go sleep together. That lost me. What an adultress, it was so terrible. You can argue with me all you want that she needed to become the artist she was meant to be, but she told her husband she was ending her relationship with this guy, and then she goes and does that. I'm not against women breaking out of being housewives, I rooted for Julianne Moore's character in The Hours, and the mother in Lovely Bones, but my moral side was really against Diane Arbus' decision at the end of this movie to hook up with Robert Downey Jr like that while she was still married and had just lied to her husband like that.

End of Spoilers!!

Anyways, Fur was an alright movie. Sometimes the straight up weirdness took away from the movie, but most of the time, it was fun and fantastical. Still, Robert Downey Jr's character was the king of overly pretentious, arrogant sleazeballs that I've seen this year, and I really didn't like how he was portrayed as a good kinda guy in this movie.

My worst movies of the year list

Ok, so if you look earlier in my posts, you can find my top ten films of the year. All I would change is adding The Proposition and Bobby to Honorable Mention, but the Top 10 remains the same as 2006 draws to a close.

So here is my Top 5 worst movies I saw this year. This is only my opinion of course.

Honorable Mention- Pirates of the Caribbean 2- This movie was just boring and rehashed all the same stuff from the first movie (which i adored). Only the ending is bringing me back to see the third one.

5- Freedomland- very melodramatic (I hate bad melodrama), and Julianne Moore was terrible in this movie, her emotional scenes were laughably bad. I had the "mystery" solved in no time.

4- The Holiday- read my previous post on this movie to understand why I didn't like it.

3- X-Men 3- I can't believe how bad this movie was, considering how good it should have been. Every mutant is given a scene of screen time, enough to exhibit their powers, then it's on to the next one. They ruined the Dark Phoenix storyline so bad it hurt me physically.

2- Hostel- I am sick still that this movie made money. It was atrocious, it had no point, it was basically pornography. There was no horror, there was just torture scenes, and the guy with any redeeming qualities is killed, while the idiot frat boy makes off, and gets revenge on all the bad guys in a really bad ending chain of events. I am also upset that a sequel is coming out, as if this movie was bad enough. Eli Roth is said to be the American Takashi Miike, but he showed nothing in this movie.

1- Lady in the Water- The only reason I didn't walk out of this one is because I needed to see how ridiculous Shyamalan would let it get. That guy has the hugest ego in the entire directing world and he proved it with this one. Only he would cast himself into a movie as the character that is going to save the world with a book. Every character was horrible, but it all comes down to Shyamalan.

Blood Diamond

Firstly, I only recently realized people are replying to my posts, and i did not know this. I am going to respond to your comments, I just didn't know before. Also, I have heard I might use too many spoilers. I can't really help using them, but I will make sure I say so before I do.

Blood Diamond is directed by Ed Zwick (Glory, The Last Samurai), and it stars Leonardo Dicaprio, Djimon Hounsou, and Jennifer Connelly. It is about the diamond trade in Sierra Leone and the civil war that started over it in 1999. Leo works for the British government in a way, and smuggles diamonds and guns in and out of the country, financing the chaos. Hounsou is a Sierra Leone native who is taken captive by Leone gangster army men. Connelly is a journalist.

I thought the movie started off great. One thing I was unprepared for was just how large of an action epic this film is. This seems like a weird comparison, but it was a grittier Indiana Jones in parts. I'm not saying this is anywhere on Indiana Jones's level, I just thought there were similarities. To it's credit, it does not let up a bit for the whole moment. It only gets tedious in the way all the action scenes become the same. There is great cycling between the two leads, Hounsou and Dicaprio, and the acting is great, if you can get over Dicaprio's so-so accent.

I said the movie started off pretty good, but this tapers off. Eventually, it begins to feel long, and this is brought on by the aforementioned redundant action scenes and a really bad script (the writing was so overly melodramatic, and the scenes between Dicaprio and Connelly felt wooden).

Deja Vu

I am quite backlogged on reviews.

Deja Vu is a time travel movie starring Denzel Washington and directed by Tony Scott. Denzel plays an ATF agent that is investigating a terrorist bombing of a ferry in New Orleans. He is contacted by a special task force that uses new technology to investigate the crime.

To begin, I like Tony Scott, I think his movies are a more complex type of Michael Bay movies, the big action blockbuster, with the stylish colors etc. He makes good action movies generally. I also really like time travel movies for the most part. So as a whole I liked this movie a good bit. The time travel bit is done pretty well, and if you can get over the inconsistencies that plague it, it is very fun and intense.

The movie is split up into three distinct parts, the first being Denzel's solo investigation of the attack, the second being the investigation using the monitoring device, and the final being the part where Denzel actually time travels. The first two thirds are great, and I was loving the movie as a whole. However, once Denzel goes back to the last hours before the attack, the movie hits a rut. It starts going over all the events that you saw previously in the movie (bloody bandages at a victims house, certain victim wearing a certain color dress, etc), and you start to realize "oh man, everything is the same! it's leading up to the same conclusion." This is done so slowly. I understood what was going on in the first couple minutes, but it just dragged. Eventually the movie reaches it's gripping conclusion, and while it was very intense and thrilling, it didn't make any sense how the past changed like that. But that's time travel movies for ya.

When Denzel is first told about the technology the task force uses, they say it is an orbital satellite system that has four satellites on every part of the planet at any given time, and they can watch anything 4.5 days ago. I instantly thought this was ridiculous, and the most far fetched idea for a device I've heard in a long time. Finally, Denzel calls BS as well, and it turns out it's basically a wormhole camera that some physicists actually discovered. I thought this was interesting, and while not possible, it was a good plot device. It also leads to one of the most innovative car chases I've seen in a while, in which with a wormhole camera watching 4.5 days ago, Denzel is chasing a guy through New Orleans. Just different.

So, Deja Vu was a pretty good action movie, and a good scifi movie. Don't go in expecting brilliance on the science end, it glosses over any realism in that aspect, but it is still pretty good. I was physically drained afterwards, in a good way, because it is a really tight thriller.

The Holiday

Oh man was The Holiday ever awful. The Holiday, a Nancy Meyers movie (the woman that did Somethings Gotta Give), is about two women both coming off of hard relationships that do a home exchange and go on vacation. While on vacation they meet men and fall back in love and so on. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet are the women and Jude Law and Jack Black are the men they meet respectively. I went into to this movie because Dina wanted me to go, and because I had hopes after seeing the cast and the person making the movie, that it could at least be as good as In Her Shoes or something like that.

I am gonna start with one of the most ridiculous sequence of events I have ever seen in movies that was in The Holiday. Cameron Diaz meets Jude Law, and they hook up. Law gets calls from two girls named Sophia and Olyvia on his cell phone and you think "Hmmm, so Jude Law is a ladies' man." And Cameron Diaz thinks the same thing. Eventually Diaz goes to Law's house, only to learn that Sophia and Olyvia are his 7 and 4 year old daughters. So I begin to think "aww that's nice." and then it hits me... Sophia and Olyvia, again SEVEN and FOUR years old, have their own phone numbers. No, just no. I laughed out loud when this realization struck me. Well moving on with the scene... take the sappiest, cheesiest, sugary sweetest things little British girls could say, multiply that by two, and squeeze it into a five minute scene. As Diaz meets these two little girls, they just keep saying the cutest things one right after the other. When this script was written, realism was absolutely abolished, and anything that could elicit an "awww" from the audience was thrown in. This scene was so painfully stupid I could barely bear it.

Finally, Diaz asks Law later why he never mentioned that he had two daughters. Instead of his reason being at all immoral or negative, it is a purely good-intentioned reason, and Law and Diaz fall further in love.

Which brings me to my big problem with the movie. Nothing happens. It is absolutely devoid of conflict, with the exception of the beginning which merely sets the movie in motion, and the end which has the typical conclusion. Winslet, Black, Diaz, and Law are all just the most amazing people, and there is never ANY doubt that the two couples will end up together. What makes it worse is that it is not funny at all. Diaz and Winslet are not taking their roles seriously either. In scenes were Winslet is supposed to be crying, it's more of a cartoony wailing noise that you know is not her actually acting-crying voice. Jack Black is so fake, that part was miscast.

While in LA, Winslet meets an old screenwriter that has become something of a recluse from Hollywood since he doesn't like the new Hollywood that only cares about commerce over art. On a couple of occasions in the movie, this screenwriter has small diatribes about how bad Hollywood is now. This is all good and well, and I agree, except that this movie is exactly what the screenwriter is complaining about. It's a plain, homogenized romantic comedy that is in no way edgy, different, or artsy. It doesn't do anything unique or new with the genre.

For Your Consideration

Another quick review.

For Your Consideration is the latest by Christopher Guest, the great mockumentary director that did This is Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind among others. I have loved the three Christopher Guest mockumentaries that I have seen, they are just so goofy and well written. It is a certain type of comedy, unlike any other. FYC differs in that it is not a mockumentary, but rather a classic plotline, sprawling look at the creation and marketing of an Oscar baity movie named Home for Purim/Thanksgiving. All the regular players from Guest movies are there like Harry Shearer and Fred Willard etc etc.

The movie does not have near as many laughs as the previous Guest films that I have seen. It is still funny at times, and smart, but it starts very slow. It's not trashy so that's good, but funny moments are few and far between for most of the movie. Or maybe I just didn't understand it.

At about the three-quarters mark of the movie, it springs forward in time to after the completion of the film, when it is being marketed. At this time, the feeling of the movie gets almost angry. Guest tears into Hollywood marketing, such as where the studio execs want the name changed from Home For Purim to Home For Thanksgiving to make it "less Jewish" and more accessible to the American people. Harry Shearer and Catherine O'Hara, who both were in the movie, absolutely sell their bodies out to make themselves look younger and make the movie more appealing I guess? Either way, it is off-putting how sudden this change in the mood of the film comes. It is rather depressing and shocking.

I enjoyed parts of FYC, I found those parts to be very funny and mocking of movies in general. Still, it was only a subpar comedy, and the ending was too blatant a rip on Hollywood, there was nothing subtle about it. I didn't so much like that.

Fred Willard is superb though, I love that guy.

If you didn't see The Lost Room on Scifi last night, I recommend that. It is a lot of fun, it has some Stephen King-ishness going on, and it's very interesting and fun and creative. It is a little scifi, a little fantasy, and just very good for being on Scifi channel. Although Battlestar Galactica is also amazing and on Scifi.

Bobby and some other stuff

I have had the hardest time making up a long, in-depth review of Bobby, and have failed. However, I still want to recommend it highly. It is shocking that Emilio Estevez wrote and directed this movie, as I can only think of him as Coach Bombay on Mighty Ducks. This movie was incredibly powerful, if a bit too big. There are TOO many characters, too much going on, and a little too much melodrama packed in there. However, this is still a very very good movie, and like I said before, I recommend it.

I think I am going to change my mind and actually go see Dreamgirls when it comes out. This type of movie is getting overdone. I understand that this is based off of a Broadway musical, and that it is itself a musical, and only somewhat based off of Diana Ross and the Supremes, but this formula is getting tiring. You know what is going to happen by seeing the previews, which gives the whole plot away. However, I keep reading great reviews, especially for the performances of Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson. It is the favorite to win the Oscar this year, and it would be foolish not to see it. I saw all the Oscar nominees last year before the ceremony, which made the Crash win all that much harder to swallow. I think because of it's early great reviews, and how powerful everyone says it is, I will see it now.

I have some more reviews coming soon, so stay tuned.

Tenacious D

The Sundance Film Festival's lineup has been released. There are about 18 movies that interest me on logline alone. I don't need 18 more movies to want to see. I'll wait and see what the word on all of them are, and we'll go from there.

I saw Tenacious D yesterday. If you don't know who Tenacious D, that is shocking. It is the comedic band formed by Jack Black and Kyle Gass. They sing about being the greatest band in the world, and their songs are pretty funny. This movie is about how they came to be.

I don't really have much to say about it. I thought it was going to be terrible at first with the opening segment which consisted of animated Tenacious D flying around on the power of their farts. However, the movie doesn't wallow in embarassingly bad toilet humor. That's not to say it's brilliant. It's an alright movie. It wasn't hysterical, it had its moments. Can't really say much more.

I would have to give Tenacious D a Vivacious C. HAHAHAH.

Have a great weekend everyone, I'll be back next week with my review for For Your Consideration and Bobby. In the meantime, go watch a good movie, not a romantic comedy. Or the Rise of Taj. Or Nativity Story or Turistas. If you are going to go to a movie this weekend, look no farther than The Fountain or something that isn't crap.