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JJ79
Member since 5/21/2007, last signed in awhile ago.
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Personal statement:
All reviews originate in my movie blog,
The Movie Rambler
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The Objective
Mirageman
Not Quite Hollywood
New World Order
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Couples Retreat
Movie Review: COUPLES RETREAT
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"Eight friends, all coupled, find themselves on a Couples Retreat under the guise of a fun, adult vacation in Eden. As it turns out, there's one small hitch: each are required to meet with counselors and work on their relationships. Not all of them are happy about it and, in fact, the two who put the trip together (Jason Bateman, Kristen Bell) are in the most treacherous waters after failing to conceive a child. Dave and Ronnie (Vince Vaughn, Malin Akerman) have two boys at home but no time for themselves. Recently divorced Shane (Faizon Love) is dating a 20-something named Trudy (Kali Hawk) who wants to dance and drink and have fun. And then there's Joey and Lucy (Jon Favreau, Kristen Davis), a couple intending to divorce once their daughter goes to college. With so many characters and storylines, director Peter Billingsley's second directorial outing has the talent to be successful and an absolutely beautiful location to work with, but feels overstuffed and "normal." It's in the f ... "
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Law Abiding Citizen
Movie Review: LAW ABIDING CITIZEN
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""Evil will always win because Good is stupid." That line comes from Spaceballs and illustrates one of the only problems in cinema and in Law Abiding Citizen in particular. When the "bad" guy is so diabolically intelligent Assistant District Attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) never manages to get one step ahead of Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) until the script demands it. Rather, he plays catch up for a majority of the film's runtime. See, throughout the action thriller, Shelton is able to mastermind outrageous killings without anyone being the wiser after the imperfect justice system fails to deal with his wife and daughter's murderers. And how does he do this? Because he's smarter than Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA and the Philadelphia Police Department put together.For a good hour-maybe more-Citizen is a rollicking story, deftly combining explosions and exposition to keep the audience engaged. Butler and Foxx support their own dueling storylines, criss crossing one another and in ... "
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GNAW
DVD Review: GNAW
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"THE FLICKThe horror genre on film goes back, roughly, to the 1890's and Le Manoir du diable by Georges Méliès. In the intervening years, filmmakers from across the globe have tried to put their spin on the genre, some successfully and some...well, less so. In the last decade or so, there is a new school of thought which equates blood and gore with horror at the expense of rational, logical decision making. Wes Craven's Scream series pointed this out to great effect, yet some people still haven't taken the hint. It's not enough to carve up a half dozen teenagers in the middle of nowhere anymore. Nor is it enough to pay lip service to the things they should be doing to survive the film. Rather, horror films (and the associated sub-genre's of chiller, slasher and torture, among others) need to create a realistic world for the characters and audience to get caught up in. The British import Gnaw does none of these things and opts, instead, to be one part slasher and one pa ... "
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The Objective
The Objective
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"THE FLICKHere's an easy question: if a movie (or book or television program) has a title which begs for an explanation or, at the very least an answer, shouldn't that production be required to provide said answer? Movies like What's Love Got to Do With It or TV's LOST have a responsibility to answer the implied questions. The same goes for The Objective, an action thriller from the director of The Blair Witch Project. Dispatched to Afghanistan under a cover story of gaining a holy man's support for the current operation, Benjamin Keynes (Jonas Ball) leads a Special Ops group through the hills after what he believes are WMD's. Only what they find isn't conventional weapons and the Taliban certainly isn't involved. But what are the strange lights and bizarre weapons? It may be a minor spoiler to say The Objective doesn't follow through on its promise. What exactly is the objective? Of course, we know what Keynes is looking for, but what is it, exactly? That's the issue. Leaving some ... "
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Paranormal Activity
Movie Review: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
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"Made for an estimated $11,000, Paranormal Activity follows the model set forth by The Blair Witch Project, utilizing non-actors, limited sets and a small handful of thriller moments to create a tense, if somewhat faulty, chiller. The central conceit of the film is simple: Micah and Katie (Micah Sloat, Katie Featherston) are haunted by a demon. In an effort to document their problems, Micah invests in a video camera and uses it nearly all the time. And that is how the first half hour of Paranormal Activity plays out, as an attempt to introduce the characters and situation to the audience. From there, writer/director Oren Peli slowly weaves in the scares, at first small sounds and eventually culminating in...well, that would be ruining it.Perhaps by design, Peli doesn't allow either Micah or Katie to really develop as characters. There's nothing to really tell the audience what makes them tick or why they're actually together. It might not be completely necessary, though looking back ... "
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Mirageman
DVD Review: MIRAGEMAN
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"THE FLICKBack in 1977, CBS aired The Amazing Spider-Man, an hour long action live action action adventure series centering on everyone's favorite web head. In that show, Nicholas Hammond (aka Peter Parker and Spider-Man) dressed in an ill-fitting suit complete with mirror-like circles for his eyes. He didn't exactly swing between buildings on webs jetting out from his wrists; he fought non-descript bad guys using his fists in a pseudo-martial arts stance. In the Chilean production Mirageman, actor Marko Zaror is given the same kind of outfit, along with wildly protruding "bug" eye lenses to create another super hero named after the description given to him by TV news reporter Carol Valdivieso (Maria Elena Swett). The idea-I think-behind Mirageman is twofold. One, capitalize on the fascination around the world with superhero films (it was made in 2007) and, two, portray a regular, ordinary joe becoming a city's savior. Ernesto Diaz Espinoza's second project as writer/director does f ... "
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Not Quite Hollywood
DVD Review: NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD
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"THE FLICKExploitation cinema refers to a film genre which cashes in on some sort of lurid, perhaps sexy, element. Blaxploitation may be the most well known iteration of this genre with films like Superfly, Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song and Blacula. These films don't rely on a "name" star or special effects to draw in the crowds; rather, they use over-the-top marketing techniques and outrageous statements to generate ticket sales. Slasher films, like Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street, can be considered exploitation films with their small budgets and and graphic kills. However, no one ever mentions Ozploitation, a group of films written, shot and released in Australia by Australian filmmakers. These films were largely created after the introduction of the R certificate (similar to the "R" MPAA rating in the United States) in 1971 and feature gratuitous nudity, sex and violence. Not Quite Hollywood traces the evolution of the genre, as well as its major cinematic entries, for ... "
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Pandorum
Movie Review: PANDORUM
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"In the future, humanity has overpopulated the Earth and conflicts over natural resources are common place. As a last resort, a giant spacecraft is sent off into space with a group of human settlers. Their mission? To colonize a new planet. On the way, though, the flight crew is awakened from hypersleep only to find their vessel on the verge of breaking down, the corridors overrun by mutated vampire-looking monster creatures and the crew suffering from the elusive "pandorum."More than half of Pandorum is a well-done homage to Alien, complete with small cast, claustrophobic sets and a bleak outlook on the future. The other part is a hyper-kinetic, mumbling mess straight out of Resident Evil. (Paul W. S. Anderson from that franchise is a producer here.) And that combination of styles ultimately leads to a positive filmgoing experience tantalizingly close to having all the goods for a classic sci fi action thriller.It should be mentioned fairly early on there are two twists in the film ... "
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Fame
Movie Review: FAME (2009)
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"There are two potential reasons the remake of 1980's Fame fails so spectacularly on the screen. The first would contend the audience is fed up with stories centering around kids learning all about an art form in a prestigious school. (See: Save the Last Dance, Save the Last Dance 2, Step Up, Step Up 2: The Streets, Center Stage, Center Stage: Turn It Up). More likely is the fact this screenplay, by Allison Burnett, is so riddled with holes, leaps in logic and a burning desire to cram four years worth of storylines into just 107 painful, lacking and excruciating minutes.The problem with the script-and it is a doozy-is that there are so many characters (11 students, 5 teachers and other supporting players) covering so much time, it's impossible to organically create drama or a cohesive story. Let's not forget to mention the obligatory production numbers, ranging from all out dance routines to theater performances and instrument recitals. With so much going on, Burnett skips the conne ... "
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New World Order
DVD Review: NEW WORLD ORDER
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"THE FLICKThey're called conspiracy theorists, routinely laughed at or mocked in the mainstream media, the people who claim the government shot John F. Kennedy or no man has ever stepped foot on the moon. And in New World Order, a subset of these people try to make a case for the eventual takeover of the entire world by an elite group of individuals. Everything from JFK to 9/11, Randy Weaver and the Branch Davidians in Waco are thrown into this 85-minute documentary. The only problem is the film itself doesn't document anything.Directors Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel utterly fail at being convincing, let alone at being competent filmmakers. New World Order never has the courage of its convictions to methodically explain its position. Rather, they allow personalities like internet talk show host Alex Jones and 9/11 protester Luke Rudowski to run roughshod over the entire film without a lick of substance. Several times through the production, Jones is allowed to dominate the screen, yel ... "
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Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Movie Review: STAR TREK V: THE ...
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"The fifth Star Trek film, The Final Frontier, is widely considered to be the worst of the original six and a contender for worst of all eleven entries in the franchise. That is a distinction this production doesn't deserve. Certainly, this story about the Enterprise being hijacked in the search for "God," has its faults. But it's nowhere near the unwatchable mess some people will claim. While it is true the visual effects are substandard for a Trek feature and the humor reeks of the writers trying too hard AND some of the devices used to get the Enterprise on its way are circumspect, this outing retains one of the most important parts of the previous entry: the focus on the relationship between Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and McCoy (DeForest Kelley).With a story by Shatner, Harve Bennett and David Loughery, Star Trek V tries to replicate the success of Star Trek IV by taking a lighter, more laid back approach to the material. This is often cited as one of the main ... "
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The Surrogates
Movie Review: SURROGATES
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"Over the main title credits of Surrogates, the audience is given a brief history of the robots which serve as a proxy for humans. Initially used to fight wars, they are gradually introduced into the mainstream, allowing humans to stay indoors, isolated from true contact with other people and live their lives by plugging into a worldwide grid. The idea is quite simple: a surrogate can do anything the user can think of. Running, jumping, climbing, sex...nothing is beyond them and everything is completely harmless to the human user. That is, until the son of the surrogates inventor dies in an apparent homicide. FBI agent Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) investigates the case, leading him on a bizarre journey which may very well seal the end of robot use.Surrogates is the second movie this month to postulate a future where a human controls either another person or a robot through advancement in internet technology. What makes Surrogates different from the vile Gamer is this film has a sense of ... "
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