It should be noted that I’m not automatically laughing when I see Will Ferrell in a movie. He doesn’t annoy me, and I find his brand of humor, generally, funny, but the mood of his films are hit or miss for me – if I’m not on board for the first laugh, then I’m stuck in a chuckle for the majority of the movie. But ‘Elf’ is still cute, which is all it aims to be, I think…
Category Archives: Movies
From Within • [one out of five]
‘From Within’ is one of those horror movies that falls flat on its face at some point and just never recovers. It didn’t even have a far distance to fall: while the setup is adequate enough for After Dark horror fare, there’s something overly plodding and silly from the outset that makes it difficult to build any tension…
I ONLY HOPE SOMEONE WILL DESCRIBE ME AS OVERLY PLODDING SOME DAY
Migrating Netflix reviews
Trust ••• [three out of five]
“Trust” isn’t all that dated. It does a good job of playing the cyber-crime story for a mainstream audience without resorting to too much faux-computer jibber-jabber. … Which director David Schwimmer (yes, that David Schwimmer) does by integrating the texts right atop the screen, almost like subtitles, with the color of the text letting us know who’s doing the “talking”. It’s a simple trick that shows that this topic is grown up, and doesn’t require a lead-in explaining what texting is or showing a closeup of someone typing on a phone so we get the point. Trust excels when it skips over the whole “cyber” aspect of it and just shows how this happens and how it ends up affecting us…
The Brood ••• [three out of five]
I watched ‘The Brood’ once and was bored out of my kit. Scanners, Videodrome – all of these are slow movies, with almost silly dialogue exchanges … that are played dead straight and are, I assume, intended to be straight. But a lot of these films at least carry that creepy feeling that moves you from one slightly surreal scene to the next, to the inevitable mutating conclusion. ‘The Brood’ stays pretty mundane for a while, on all accounts. Even when we start to get pieces about what’s going on, it’s almost presented in-between the scenes, giving the feeling that we’re witnessing things after they’re occurring, which is a tension killer…
Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie •• [two out of five]
What did I expect from a Tim & Eric movie? Good question. Not a plot. That’s what. I expected a gross-out poop joke: met and exceeded. I expected bizarre editing choices: sure. I expected some recurring characters: not really. But a plot? That seemed out of the question. I assumed this was going to be a Brain Candy type movie, a very loose structure woven together by mini-sketches. Instead, we get an awesomely pitch-perfect more-than-I-could’ve-hoped-for hilarious opening scene that sets the stage for a plausible setup… and then we get all stalled up with that dang plot…
Limitless •••• [four out of five]
‘Limitless’ is total wish fulfillment. I went back and forth several times with varying interpretations on what the point was, but overall, I think it’s best just to leave it as is, as a “what if?” scenario that doesn’t end with the bittersweet Flowers for Algernon ending that normally comes with these things…
Somewhere ••• [three out of five]
‘Somewhere’ is about the inbetween moments of being a celebrity. Not the ‘tender’ moments, more like the downtime, falling asleep watching strippers in your room (which is the second scene). It’s interesting from afar, but I can’t say that it’s a compelling view, as told by the opening shot: Perhaps 2 minutes of a car speeding around a test track. No music, no other sound effects. Then, a tired Stephen Dorff gets out and looks around, his expression one of – “Well, we’ve done that. What’s next?” This is the entire film. Kudos to Coppola for not making this off-putting or lesson-laden – it’s neither rubbing our face in the coolness of movie life or telling us “woe is me for being bored with money,” it’s just sort of showing it for what it is.
Pop Skull •• [two out of five]
Pop Skull tells you what it’s going to be like from the start: a warning that the images might cause epilepsy, and then the warning sort of blinks off the screen all trance like. …Pop Skull had some good reviews going for it and when the voiceover starts, it’s apparent that the style… well, matches. It’s not that this couldn’t have been done completely differently and better, but it’d be a different film then, one the creator didn’t intend. And though I’m surprised at the amount of praise this movie received (because it is boring), I do at least feel that this was a purposeful creation and not just an attempt to make something cool. That counts for something…
YellowBrickRoad ••• [three out of five]
YellowBrickRoad proposes that, in the 40’s, all the inhabitants of a small town just took off on a path into the mountains and disappeared. The records of the incident have been classified for whatever reason, and JUST NOW at the start of the movie, they’ve become available, and are claimed by a small crew hoping to follow the path and write a book on what they find.
…Can you reason out what may or may not be going on? Sure. But the film doesn’t ask you do that until the end, which makes me feel like no one really knew where they were taking the film until the end…
vaguely-offensive 