Kaos' way behind movie reviews

[Snaggletiger]

She is.

You don't say much, Sir.  But when you do.....

[Snaggletiger]

The Rundown.  B- made for TV action flick.  The Rock does a pretty good one man army/wrecking crew.  Seann William Scott was actually watchable in something other than American Pie.  And Christopher Walken cracks me up.  The guy plays a ruthless mofo for 99.9% (Or 267/279ths) of the movie.  Then delivers a one liner in Christopher Walken fashion and I spewed Diet Pepsi on the couch. 

I'm easily amused.

[Godfather]

The Rundown.  B- made for TV action flick.  The Rock does a pretty good one man army/wrecking crew.  Seann William Scott was actually watchable in something other than American Pie.  And Christopher Walken cracks me up.  The guy plays a ruthless mofo for 99.9% (Or 267/279ths) of the movie.  Then delivers a one liner in Christopher Walken fashion and I spewed Diet Pepsi on the couch. 

I'm easily amused.

Did we go back in time? Is this 2003, this isn't 2003?

[Snaggletiger]

Did we go back in time? Is this 2003, this isn't 2003?

The Giants win the pennant.  The Giants win the pennant.

Look, I don't get out much.

[Kaos]

She is.

Nope.  Never.  Could only see this:



Or this:



Couldn't do it if I had to. 

[Kaos]

Annabelle

I'm so tired of horror movies that essentially consist of somebody screaming.  Annabelle looked scary, but that was all she really did.  Her eyes could have moved to enhance the creepiness. Her head could have turned. Anything. Instead all she did was sit there with that stupid look on her face.  Chuckie would kill the everliving hell out of this lame doll.

The movie had a slightly spooky aura but just never really went anywhere. 

I had some major continuity problems with it. 

1) The movie starts with the hero couple in church, but because of his job and some fire they have to move (or something).  They move to a different town yet the next day (and more days after that) they're back in the same church again. 

2) Depending on where they need to be for cinematic purposes, the couple change places in the bed.  Sometimes she sleeps on the left, sometimes on the right.  That's now how it works.  You get your side and that's it. 

3) Husband is a new doctor.  "They put him on "the night shift"  But he's gone to work during the day when things are happening.  He's around at night.  He's going to "take off early" for a romantic dinner but never shows,  an act that was worthy of dwelling on and her sad putting away of the dishes and candles. But his absence was never mentioned after that.  Where was he? 

4)  Mia and Leeah.  Ugh.  I wanted to punch Alfre Woodard in the tooth.
 
5) The movie opens with the woman watching breaking news about the Tate LaBianca murders.  So the film was set in 1969.  But wait.. according to the film synopsis it's set in 1967.  So she was watching breaking news on something that wouldn't happen for two years. 

6) When somebody breaks into the house, Mia runs to the phone and dials 911.  Really? 911 service wasn't widely used in California until well after the movie's timeframe.  One municipality in California, a small one, had 911 service in 1970. The film was supposedly set in 1967.  It was 1972 before the California legislature began implementation of a statewide 911 program and 1985 before it was complete.  Yet in 1969, she knew to dial 911 instinctively?   I don't think so.  Woodard later runs to a ROTARY phone and dials 911.  Wrong.  This bothered me probably more than anything. 

7) The ugly ass doll.  Who in the fuck would want something that ugly? 

8) Before the baby is born, there's a scene talking with the neighbors where they claim they don't know if it will be a boy or a girl.  Then they go inside to the nursery and it's full of creepy ass dolls.  Why would you decorate a nursery with such an overwhelming female theme if there was a possibility it could be a boy?  A gay boy, maybe. 

9) All the Annabelle's.  Who was Annabelle anyway?  The girl who played Mia was named Annabelle.  The woman who broke into their home was named Annabelle.  Was the doll an Annabelle too?  Or did it just adopt the name of the weirdo who broke in?  AND... was the doll "evil" before the break in or was it just ugly as fuck but harmless?  AND... if it WAS creevil (creepy and evil) what was the purpose of the psychos breaking in?  Why didn't the doll just do its thing?

10) Finally the doctor dad.  He thought she was crazy.  Then after she freaked out again and he didn't see anything, suddenly he was fully on board with "there's got to be a demon blah, blah, blah."   Just bad acting and motives. 

So, in short?  Boo.   

[Kaos]

Hunger Games: Mockingjay

Karl Marx is smiling today. 

That is all.

[Kaos]

Expendables 3

Painfully bad.  Clunky dialogue, bad acting, improbable action at every turn. 

There's a throwaway line issued by Ronda Rousey about how the plan Stallone has devised to blow up some shit or something would be good "if this were 1985."  That says a lot about this movie.  I'm sure Stallone intends it to be a loving tribute to the bad ass action films that dominated that decade. 

Schwartzenegger slaughtered predatory aliens and cyborged to earth. Rocky single handedly beat the Russians and Rambo broke sheriffs and all of Vietnam. Die Hard rocked Christmas. Indiana Jones would whip your ass. Literally. Mad Max was hell on wheels. Martin Riggs was borderline insane.

It was an era of big explosions, bigger guns and the baddest motherfuckers on the planet.  They were so fucking big and so monstrously bad that they couldn't share the screen.

As a curious contrast/aside, that era also produced some of the biggest, baddest horror icons -- Michael, Freddy and Jason -- who also were so big that they couldn't share the stage. 

But that was then.   Things are different now.  Big dumb (or smug, or smarmy, or sarcastic) lugs who blow shit up don't resonate any more in this beta world. 

If these guys had created these movies back in 1988?  Biggest films of all time maybe.  Today it seems clichéd and hackneyed.  Ham fisted and plodding.  It was just bad, bad bad.  It doesn't work now. 

One of the biggest problems is just how old the primary leads look.  Stallone still has the guns, but his face is a muddled mess incapable of human expression.  Harrison Ford looked shockingly old.  It was actually painful to see him look as bad as he did.  He looked like absolute grizzled hell.  Wesley Snipes looks pretty much the same but he couldn't act except to overact.  Arnold appeared to be wearing a very bad and very tacky hairpiece. 

Honestly it was pretty sad to see those guys who once ruled the box office gimping around and spouting really bad one liners.  Really bad.  REALLY bad. 

The new guys weren't much better.  There's no real market any longer for tough guy blow-em-up action leads but even if there were, Lutz, Ortiz and Powell don't have the chops.  Neither does Rousey although she fits a dress surprisingly well considering. 

The only people who comported themselves well in this bombastic mess were Antonio Banderas and Mel Gibson.  Banderas looked trim and youthful as a talkative sidekick.  Gibson unleashes some of the old eye-popping lunacy that served him well as Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon series.  His face also didn't look like it had tons of work done -- and it served him well.  He was about the only one who looked like he could step into his old shoes and still get the job done.  Gibson looked as if he could crawl back into Thunderdome and make it. 

There were a couple of trying to be cute lines: One about Snipes being in prison for tax evasion and another about nobody being able to understand anything Statham said. 

But those two glimmers didn't overcome the blundering and misguided attempt at nostalgia here. 

Hate it.  Would have loved to see this movie in 1985. 

[Snaggletiger]

Saturday night, I let mini pick a movie to go to and he chose The Hunger Games follow up, Mockingbird, Blue Jay...whatever.  I rarely want to walk out of a theater in mid flick, but this one....

Now granted, I didn't see Hunger Games and I'm sure this one would have had a little more meaning if I had.  But, I knew enough about it and they explained enough during the movie to give anyone a pretty good idea of what was going on.  This movie was just plain bad.  Very little action and the acting....even I recognized this as a steaming pile of crap. 

I really don't recall much of what Jennifer Lawrence has done in the past. Maybe she's a great actress and my hope is that her performance lies solely on the shoulders of the director.

CUT.....No, no, no.  Jennifer, we've gone over this a hundred times.  You're supposed to have the exact same "I'm scared to death and about to cry" look you had in the previous 27 scenes.  Now get that smile off your face and think scared.  Really depressed and scared.  Okay, places everybody. Scene 28, Catnip Cleverbeen looks really scared, like she's about to cry while gazing out over the landscape.  Aaaannnd...ACTION.

Just a horrible movie. 

[GH2001]

Saturday night, I let mini pick a movie to go to and he chose The Hunger Games follow up, Mockingbird, Blue Jay...whatever.  I rarely want to walk out of a theater in mid flick, but this one....

Now granted, I didn't see Hunger Games and I'm sure this one would have had a little more meaning if I had.  But, I knew enough about it and they explained enough during the movie to give anyone a pretty good idea of what was going on.  This movie was just plain bad.  Very little action and the acting....even I recognized this as a steaming pile of crap. 

I really don't recall much of what Jennifer Lawrence has done in the past. Maybe she's a great actress and my hope is that her performance lies solely on the shoulders of the director.

CUT.....No, no, no.  Jennifer, we've gone over this a hundred times.  You're supposed to have the exact same "I'm scared to death and about to cry" look you had in the previous 27 scenes.  Now get that smile off your face and think scared.  Really depressed and scared.  Okay, places everybody. Scene 28, Catnip Cleverbeen looks really scared, like she's about to cry while gazing out over the landscape.  Aaaannnd...ACTION.

Just a horrible movie.

She can't act a fucking lick. Most overrated person in Hollywood. Only good movies she has been in she has been held up by a great supporting cast (Hustle).

[Snaggletiger]

She can't act a fucking lick. Most overrated person in Hollywood. Only good movies she has been in she has been held up by a great supporting cast (Hustle).

Reminded me of Kristen Stewart.  I saw a little bit of Twilight and did see Snow White and the Huntsman.  She has one expression.  ONE.  Same with Lawrence in this movie.  She never changed and really didn't do a dang thing in this movie except walk around looking scared and worried.  No action at all.

[Kaos]

She can't act a fucking lick. Most overrated person in Hollywood. Only good movies she has been in she has been held up by a great supporting cast (Hustle).

See my reviews in this thread of the previous Hunger Games movie, House at the End of the Street and also Winter's Bone.  I've discussed this vapidity at length.  Particularly in the review of the previous Hunger Games entry. 

She was amazing in that movie.  But she's very uneven.  Supposedly good in Silver Linings Playbook but I didn't watch it.   I did like her performance in American Hustle, but she was the weakest part of that movie and very nearly took it down a notch. 

[Kaos]

Dumb and Dumber 2

An idea at least 15 years past its expiration date.  Was hard to watch those two clown with the craggy age lines marring their respective faces.  Was also painful to look at Kathleen Turner and remember how hot she was in Body Heat and that Michael Douglas movie where he played an Indiana Jones kind of dude. 

There were a few funny moments, but the climate is different now than it was when the first movie came out.  The same kind of juvenile gags don't always pay off.  For every one that hit in this movie there were a dozen painful, cringingly bad misses. 

Much like The Expendables, this would have been a funny movie in 1998.  Not so much today.  There were a few good scenes, but it failed on numerous levels. 

Did I laugh?  Yeah, at parts.  Parts I probably shouldn't have because of what it says about me, but a few times. 

[Kaos]

Flirting With Disaster (1996)

Was searching for something to watch in the middle of a bout of amnesia and ran across this.  Ben Stiller, Tea Leoni, Patricia Arquette, Mary Tyler Moore, Josh Brolin, Alan Alda, Lilly Tomlin.  Figured it would be a stupid harmless comedy. 

Wow.

Concept is that Stiller can't name his baby until he finds out who his birth parents are.  So he and his wife (Arquette) take off cross country with an adoption broker (Leoni) to find them.  The rest is ridiculous setups designed to introduce bizarre characters (truckers, gay federal agents, etc.) and offbeat locales. 

Some of what we were subjected to during this journey?

Discussion and portrayal of armpit licking as a sexual turnon.   

Mary Tyler Moore in a bra and panties going down on George Segal (and then flossing her teeth).

Josh Brolin doing gay sex and kissing a dude.

Alda and Tomlin having yoga sex and sharing a joint.

And Stiller finding out that the last name of his birth parents was Schlicting  (pronounced "Shitting")

You can hear his mental gears turn.  Hey, it was funny when people thought the last name was shitting! What if we make a whole movie about a dude whose last name is FUCKER!  Oh ha!  What a brilliant concept!  We'll make meeeelions. 

Sometimes what is seen cannot be unseen.  Knob gobbling MTM is one of them. 

[Kaos]

Exodus: Gods and Kings

Short version? 


"I'm Moses!"


Egypt, bitch.

That's all you need to know.

[AUJarhead]

Maybe she's a great actress and my hope is that her performance lies solely on the shoulders of the director.

Or blue body paint.

[GH2001]

Lot of downtime right now on Vac so have caught a few movies...mostly older ones, one new one.


No Good Deed - decent. Not great but better than what I was expecting going in. The villian is a cut throat, high IQ, relentless badass. That is all.

Saw 4 - these movies entertain me. I stopped at Saw 3 a few years ago and wanted to pick back up with the series. As anyone knows who has watched them, they are "Thinking" horror/psychological movies. Not great but they are entertaining and worth a view.

Saw 5 - same as 4. Decent for horror flick. "Saw" movies at least have some depth to them and attempt somewhat of a twist right when you think you have them figured out. I like that.

Requiem for A Dream - I find Aronofsky to be hit and miss with his movies. This one was ok. Probably somewhere in the middle but I liked it more than I disliked it. I think it was also one of his first ones too. More along the lines of "Pi" than the Wrestler or Fighter. Better than The Fountain. I havent seen Noah yet so can't compare. Love him or hate him, he makes interesting movies. Def outside the box with this one. Elen Burnstyn "outacts" the entire rest of the cast in this one which included Jared Leto, Jennifer Connely (delicious), Chris McDonald (click click, Shootah!) and Marlon Wayans.

Penguins of Madagascar - First Madagascar and even 2nd one was ok. This one is just wearing out the welcome. Seems they are just making animated movies to make money now. Case in point - Frozen. Average at best movie. Animated movies like Toy Story, Shrek and Lion King were good and set the bar. Then it seems they just try to milk it for what its worth after that making crappy sequels (Shrek, Madagascar, Toy Story) and crappy originals (Big hero, Frozen, Brave). Animated movies have become a cash cow much like Taylor Swift is in the music industry because they know kids will drag their parents to it regardless of how awful or average it is. And thats what happened to me on this one. ehhhhh

[WiregrassTiger]

Unbroken. See it.

[Kaos]

Into The Woods

Awful. Terrible. Horrible. Monumentally bad.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life.  Absolutely abysmal.  I wanted to leave 15 minutes into it. And it never got better. If anything it got worse. 

Given the choice of watching this movie again or eating four dozen tomatoes while watching a Bear Bryant movie marathon, I'd choose Busey as Bear 52 out of 50 times. 

First of all it was a musical.  I wasn't expecting that.  I can handle musicals.  Phantom of the Opera is great.  I've seen others that I enjoyed as well. But the songs in this clunking turd were horribly awful.  And stupid. And painful.  That made the fact that it was a "musical" more annoying than anything. Mother FUCK this was a bad movie.

Fuck this movie.  Fuck this fucking motherfucking piece of fucking fucked up tripe. 

It's been a long time since I hated on a movie as hard as I hate on this one.  T E R R I B L E movie.  Sucked. Blew. Reeked. Stunk.

Hated every single second of it. 

[Godfather]

Into The Woods

Awful. Terrible. Horrible. Monumentally bad.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life.  Absolutely abysmal.  I wanted to leave 15 minutes into it. And it never got better. If anything it got worse. 

Given the choice of watching this movie again or eating four dozen tomatoes while watching a Bear Bryant movie marathon, I'd choose Busey as Bear 52 out of 50 times. 

First of all it was a musical.  I wasn't expecting that.  I can handle musicals.  Phantom of the Opera is great.  I've seen others that I enjoyed as well. But the songs in this clunking turd were horribly awful.  And stupid. And painful.  That made the fact that it was a "musical" more annoying than anything. Mother FUCK this was a bad movie.

Fuck this movie.  Fuck this fucking motherfucking piece of fucking fucked up tripe. 

It's been a long time since I hated on a movie as hard as I hate on this one.  T E R R I B L E movie.  Sucked. Blew. Reeked. Stunk.

Hated every single second of it.

But did you like it?