7 movies I hate that everyone else loves

Okay,

This is a tricky topic and is purely opinion, but something I wanted to address in my return to writing. There are certain movies that everyone, including a lot of critics, seem to love that I just don't care that much for. I'll share my reasoning and thoughts, but remember, this isn't a slam or a personal attack if you like these movies. On to the list...

7. Love, Actually

See, I don't mind romantic comedies when they are really good, like When Harry Met Sally or Garden State or Say Anything. This movie has a lot going for it... an amazing, diverse cast, the director behind the great British comedies Mr. Bean and Blackadder, a Christmas theme, but it just seemed bloated and overstuffed. Everyone seems to be having a good time making this, and I don't know how many smirks and chuckles there were, but there are very few actual jokes.

This also seems to use every single cliche about love and every obvious rocom situation it can toss together (I realize the director also did Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral, but he didn't need to recycle the better parts of those movies). As a result, the characterizations are fairly thin and the more interesting (I personally did enjoy Bill Nighy's aging rock star and the pairing of Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson) are lost in giant sea of plots. The overall acting quality ensures its not an awful movie, but I don't understand why its considered a modern romantic classic at all.

6. Nell

Jodie Foster has amazing talent, but for me, this is Jodie Foster's "Simple Jack." (Tropic Thunder reference). Its amazingly self indulgent, cliched, weird, and unrealistic. Foster at this point had won Best Actress for both Silence of the Lambs and the Accused and this was her big followup to Silence. A lot of people seem to forget that she did get nominated for Nell for best actress for both the Golden Globes and Oscars and the movie was up for the Best Drama Golden Globe. Nell also gives us the worst Liam Neeson performance that I'm aware of as the obvious "romantic" lead. Just a lazy character arc, easy acting choices, and a part that literally any middle aged actor could play. Critically acclaimed, I just didn't like any part of it.

5. Avatar

What I liked about this movie: the spectacle of seeing it in theater in 3-D. It was really amazing and cool to look at, it reminded me of Jurassic Park the way it took technology to the next level. The low gravity world especially was amazingly photorealistic, seemed believable, and all the little details with the plant life and such was a joy to look at. That all being said... once you get past the visuals, the rest of this movie (acting, script, and editing) ranges from mediocre to awful.

Acting... Sam Worthington might be one of the blandest actors working today (except for maybe Channing Tatum), I mean hes in great shape and sounds intimidating, but fell flat here. The dude playing the General tore pages out of the Hopper/Malkovich book of cheeseball villain performances. Sigourney Weaver didn't have much to do besides look concerned... Giovanni Ribsi seemed really miscast... That dorky guy from Dodgeball seemed really out of place... and all the blue cat people were recycled characters from Dances With Wolves... Wise Chief, check. The love interest, check. The angry warrior guy who doesn't respect the lead, check.

Script, wow... totally uninspired, goofy, and obvious. The story about disrespecting native peoples and technology (I'll go with some less obvious examples of Medicine Man) , or trying to fit into a foreign less technologically advanced culture (Last Samurai) or the little guys beating the technologically advanced (Endor in Return of the Jedi)... This has been done so many times and the problem was that Avatar brought nothing new storywise to the table at all. All in all, not a total waste of time, but man, not deserving of the #1 movie all time of box either.

4. Crash

This actually won best picture and by the end, I was hammered over the head with the amazingly unsubtle message that racism is A) still very prevalent B) bad and C) Everyone's racist. Most of the acting was decent, but the obvious silly dialogue and huge cast made it seem fairly disjointed. This movie has loads and loads of characters who have clever intersecting lives I'd have liked to have seen the movie focus more on the pair of cops played by Matt Dillon and Ryan Phillipe. There are movies that do the whole "ensemble story" thing really well; the underrated Syriana and Babel to name a couple recent examples. This movie's clumsy "important society commentary" took away from fairly strong acting and that's part of why most people probably forget it won best picture less then 10 years ago.

3. Cars

I really enjoy most of the Pixar films (I own both the Incredibles and Wall-E with the Toy Story trilogy being a definite future buy) which is why this one sticks out like a sore thumb to me as far as overall quality. The story here is amazingly basic and cliched: an arrogant city dwelling champion has to go back to the country to rediscover what made him happy/successful. Then, we have the Pixar cliche checklist...

Stranger in a community or group? Check.
Brooding moment from a main character? Check.
Goofy sidekick with a heart of gold who forms a comedic duo with the straight laced main character? Check.
Obligatory love interest interrupted by some awkwardness? Check.
Group full of wacky members with their own useful quirks? Check.
The new relationships threaten to go downhill when something happens to separate or alienate the stranger? Check.

I will admit that some of the throwaway gags are somewhat funny (the car talk guys and Jay Leno cameos, the fact that the "cars" womens bathroom line is super long compared to the mens, and the Richard Petty crash tribute at the climax. I'm also scared for the sequel this summer in which the cars are secret agents (why can't we get Incredibles 2?). Considering the enduring popularity of the merchandise and video games, I just don't get it.

2. Moulin Rouge

I have similar problems with the cliche storm that forms this movie.. Its a super derivative plot chock full of romantic archetypes, with a super hammy villain, where everyone breaks out into song... Moulin Rouge was the first original musical to be released for a really long time and while I understand the point behind the cliches (its trying to be the ultimate musical) I don't like that there are no original songs. The adaptation of a wide range of well known famous songs works pretty well for the most part, but Id like to have seen at least one memorable original instead of a constant mash up.

On the positive, I do appreciate the choreography and cinematography as well as the extremely opulent costumes and sets. Baz Luhrmann has always been an extremely visually dynamic director and this movie fits his overall style. However, the rapid fire editing in some of the more frenetic sequences make it difficult to take in the grandeur of whats going on.

This film also contains one of my least favorite cliches from an editing/storytelling standpoint: telegraphing the ending in the opening couple minutes by telling the whole story in flashback. This can work well in certain cases (Usual Suspects and Memento are excellent examples) but by telling the audience about the women he loved (obvious past tense) lets everyone know whats going to happen to Nicole Kidman's character. Like Avatar, I can't forgive the beauty for the bad writing.

1. Seven Pounds

Will Smith... The funny thing is that his obviously terrible movies (Wild Wild West, Men In Black 2, Legend of Bagger Vance) are recognized as such while his better efforts like Ali and Pursuit of Happyness have gotten much acclaim. While I Am Legend definitely had problems, I can blame most of them on a poorly edited and rewritten ending. This movie, I blame solely on Will Smith going for some Oscar Best Actor awards. I feel like Smith (and Russell Crowe in Beautiful Mind) got snubbed in favor of Denzel at the 2002 Oscars (I thought Denzel in Training Day should have won best Supporting Actor as the lead was Ethan Hawke).

Seven Pounds was a critical miss (only a 26% on rotten tomatoes and a 4.6/10 on metacritic) yet it still made $167 million worldwide on a $54 million budget and has a 7.6/10 positive rating on IMDB meaning that a lot of people think this is a legitimate good movie.

Spoilerwise, I'm not going to get into massive detail, but the whole premise of the movie is fairly obvious despite the "shocking twist" that shows up towards the end complete with stirring musical score. Smith angsts his way through one of the goofiest, illogical series of plot contrivances I've ever seen. The only other actor who escapes this storm of silliness is Rosario Dawson who puts up a fairly believable showing as the love interest.

Heck the opening scene in which Smith's character calls 911 to report a suicide, the operator says "Who's the victim" to which Smith replies "I am" is a great example of the "telling the movie backwards" plot that makes the final reveal super obvious. For example, I'm pretty sure that keeping a box jellyfish as a pet wouldn't work in so small a tank and would be illegal. There are other plot holes concerning how Smith is able to do what hes doing and why no one else tries to stop him. The end result is an admirable act of redemption completely lost in melodrama and complete pretentiousness. I just don't understand how anyone could like this overly maudlin movie or consider it good.


Next up, the reverse: 7 movies that I love that everyone else hates

More Yakima Thoughts...

Okay,



I am a lazy writer, so some bullet points first...



-I really love when a city has an actual main street and most major businesses are on this street. There is also a major east-west street (Nob Hill Blvd) in Yakima so between the north-south Main and this other street, its almost impossible to get lost.



-There's a bonafied Arctic Circle still operating in Yakima. The one in Olympia closed 15+ years ago and I haven't seen any outside of California since then. If you are unaware, Arctic Circle has crinkle cut fries as their default fries.. The only chain style fast food place that has them that I know of.



-It's really dirty here, but thats to be expected with the warmer drier climate. Its really odd to look around and see blue sky and very few trees. There's also a bare group of rolling hills surrounding the town (the Yakima valley) which is a stark contrast to the normal group of buildings, trees, and Mt. Rainier that makes up the Tacoma skyline.



I'd also like to mention actual work for a bit. I find it kind of interesting how people react to our booth. I've been using the same line "Hi folks, do you need any windows or doors for your home?" on almost everyone. I feel this gets right to the point, we do have our Skittles window to talk about, but the more hardcore window enthusiasts don't really care as much about that.



People either need vinyl replacement windows or they don't. A lot of people will say "no thanks" or " I rent" which are both perfectly acceptable reasons as to why one wouldn't need new vinyl windows. A lot of people, and I mean a lot have said "I just had them replaced". This one to me can be a little more dubious... I doubt that the number of people who say this matches the actual number of window replacements. Some of these people may have replaced a window or 2 with something from Home Depot, but its iffy that so many people have replaced all of their windows.



The two responses that I like are people that do need windows, so they say "Yes" and then sign up in some way, or people who say "No, but we already have your windows and we like them" which means that our base of existing clients is happy with our company.



People that ignore me, put up a hand, or walk away faster... hopefully will be more polite in the future. We are in the commercial area full of vendors, if you dont want to be pitched by vendors, then don't come into the Sundome and instead stay near the rides, animals, and overpriced food and beverage. I won't ask you about windows if I am walking around outside, so just avoid our area.



Finally, stupid responses to the Skittles window. It isn't really that funny or novel, so don't fake laugh at it. People have been doing "guess the amount of these small things in this larger container" for quite a while, its not even funny enough to be the basis for a Rob Schneider movie, so don't fake laugh. Also, don't ask if you can have any... I've never heard a "guess the jelly beans in the jar and if you guess, you get one" contest. This is because that would be a completely moronic idea... Obviously if we gave out Skittles, the contest would be completely invalid.

One last note, Skittles are not like M&Ms... because there are purple Skittles and blue/brown M&Ms. Skittles are also not shaped in any way like jelly beans. So people, unless you are legally blind, please identify the candy before you make an intelligent remark like "that's a lot of M&Ms." Its really not that hard. The one candy I'd think would be mistaken would be Reeses Pieces, but no one has ever thought we had Reeses in there (probably because I think its a misdemeanor to waste the volume of Reeses we have in the window. That, and Reese might come by and want his pieces back).

Anyhow, enough ranting for now... Tomorrow, dissertation about foodstuffs and more random thoughts.

That's all I have to say about that.

Patrick

Yakima, Day 1

Hello friends and comrades,

I've been assigned to work 4 nights, 5 days in our neighboring state of Eastern Washington. Its a strange land, where they helpfully have the same currency as us in Western Washington, the dollar.

First off, the weather... Its amazingly sunny out here. In Tacoma, the highs for the next 4 days should be 71, 71, 68, 66 with partially cloudy/patchy fog type weather. Here in Yakima, its 81, 81, 80, and 76 and completely clear, literally, not a cloud in the sky. So for all the people who grump and grouch about "where's summer?", you should take the 2 hour, 40 minute drive over the scary mountains and visit the Palm Springs of Washington.

Second, the grocery store. Top Foods is Top Foods.. which is true, but i was startled by the size of the hispanic foods aisle. At the Top Foods on Union Street back in Tacoma, the Hispanic Foods sections occupies about 3-4 bays, where as at the Top Foods at Union Gap, Yakima, the same section occupies one whole long side of an aisle. There's one bay devoted entirely to bagged masa (the corn flour used to make primarily tamales) and another that's nothing but canned chiles of different varieties. Also, in the bulk foods area, theres an immense bin of dried pinto beans.

This may be because according to the best (and quickest) source I found, the population mix is 69% white and 34% hispanic/latino. Now beyond the obvious that this adds up to more than 100% and that african american/pacific islander/native americans are somehow in the negative percent, there's a substantial hispanic population here, compared to Tacoma's 60% white and 7% latino.

Finally, the Yakima Mall area... It looks normal enough, with 2 stories and what not. The bottom story was the normal mix of clothing stores, a hallmark, an orange julius, nothing to speak of. The top floor had a 3 restaurant food court - a pizzeria, a chinese place, and the very tasty Bruchis cheesesteaks. To the left of the pizzeria was a framed picture store, and to the right of the other 2 were a Christian bookstore and a huge military recruiting area (that has banners visible from downstairs). It was a really weird and quiet floor with the eerie feeling you get when devout photographers, glasses wearing Jesus biography readers, and the military. And tasty cheesesteaks and a bored looking chinese lady and the most stereotypical Italian guy working at the pizzeria (his name might have been Tony and the special was spaghetti with meatballs).

The rest of the mall area looks like someone saw the Lakewood Town Centre and decided to place the same bunch of stores, except not in a neat grouping where they all face inwards and you park inbetween them. Instead, the Union Gap mall area has the same 10-12 stores (Borders, Petco, Shopco, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc.) all in one huge interconnected parking lot facing pell mell in every direction so you have to drive around to each one separately in the least convienient way possible. This would be a problem in Lakewood, except at this town center, there was literally no one there (I know its Thursday afternoon, but still) so getting around would only waste your gas and not your time.

Got to go earn my keep and go to work and have some folks guess at some Skittles.

That's all I have to say about that... For now

Patrick

Machete!

Robert Rodriguez really needs the credit for being one of the premier action directors of modern film. Seriously, think about it... Desperado, Sin City, Dusk Till Dawn, Grindhouse, and now Machete... Even his more flawed films like Faculty and Once Upon a Time in Mexico definitely have great kinetic energy to them.

A lot of people like to point at the Spy Kids Trilogy, Sharkboy/Lavagirl, and Shorts as his weak points. He has a family and wants to make movies for his kids too... I've got no problem with that. The fact that his kids inspired him to make the Spy Kids and helped him write Sharkboy and Shorts is really cool in my book. I can't picture many other directors making big studio movies inspired by their kids stories... That said...

MACHETE!

Saw it at a 1:50 matinee, which to me is the perfect time to see a movie like this and wow, was this awesome... Tonewise, somewhere between Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Planet Terror... Exactly what I thought it'd be, so just some bullet points...

Danny Trejo finally gets his starring role and channels his inner Charles Bronson... Yep, he doesn't have a lot of range at all, but no one plays the quiet badass better...

Steven Seagal's hispanic accent was worth the $8.00 matinee price.

Pretty much every Rodriguez supporting favorite showing up... even the doctor and twin babysitters from Planet Terror... and Daryl Sabara, the boy from the Spy Kids movies... and James Parks as Sheriff McGraw (who was also in Kill Bill and Grindhouse as the same character)

Although Jessica Alba can't act at all... it seemed more appropriate here.

Why has it taken this long for Michelle Rodriguez to show up in a Robert Rodriguez film?

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know I loved Shea Whigham in Splinter... and he's in a smaller supporting role here too, and does pretty well...

The Hungarian bodyguard is played by Rodriguez's buddy, Nimrod Antal, who directed Predators.

Geez this was bloody, but not as bloody as Piranha 3-D

There's a lot of plot here, but the final fight sequence is worth the price of admission..

Eli Roth, get on that Thanksgiving movie next!!

Downside... there's a little too much plot and a few too many characters... but I have to give an overall rating - 7.5/10... the extra .5 for the last 10 seconds, which made me laugh out loud.

Gratuitious Fun

So this summer, most of the movies that I wanted to see all showed up in mid to late August. So some quick thoughts about some of those movies...

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - 8/10

Ridiculous energy, really fun fight sequences, and three great villains (cocky Chris Evans being utilized properly, schmarmy Jason Schwartzmann, and an amazingly great job by Brandon Routh). Michael Cera wasn't as irritating as usual and I actually liked him as a badass hero. The soundtrack fits the movie really well, with most of the music by Cera's band, Sex Bob-Omb written by Beck and the songs of another band written by Metric. The crazily kinetic and frenetic visual style really fits the story, and Edgar Wright does for retro video games here what he did with zombies in Shaun of the Dead and action movies in Hot Fuzz. Its a shame that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are a little too old to be involved with the teenage-20something action. The reason why this movie doesn't get a perfect 10/10... Mary Elizabeth Wimstead as Ramona Flowers was fairly weak to me as the "dream girl." She seemed actually a little realistic and mopey and not as desirable as the movie tried to make her. Also, the first half hour of this movie seems like "Not Another Michael Cera Movie" as it takes a while for the first evil ex to show up and the inbetween time is fairly bland and not that interesting.

Expendables - 6/10

I really wanted to like this one and I liked the energy, but the movie was more a Stallone-Statham piece with most of the other big name action stars relegated to supporting roles or almost cameos. In particular, the iconic Jet Li only gets a lame series of "short" jokes and actually has to be saved by Stallone on multiple occasions. The Stallone-Willis-Governator scene is definitely the high point, but its far too short. I understand that Arnold has other commitments, but I've had liked to seen Bruce Willis be in the movie more (maybe showing up at the end as a surprise mastermind villain). Many of the fight scenes are annoyingly shot in close up shaky cam and a lot of the martial arts and fighting prowess of the different actors is lost by the poor editing. The entire last sequence is a total throwback to the glorious excess of 80s action movies especially Commando and I really loved Terry Crews' weapon as well as the Statham/Li double team move (anything else would be too serious of spoilers). The Expendables is worth seeing, its fun and mindless, but there's a lot of wasted potential that I hope a future sequel could fix.

Piranha 3-D - 9/10

As to the movie filled to the brim with glorious excess, I bring you Piranha 3-D. Featuring a super eclectic cast, the most nudity in a non-pornographic movie that I possibly have ever seen, and a ridiculously gory 3rd act, this movie delivered in every way I hoped it could. It was really fun to see director Alexandre Aja's humorous side, as his previous films (High Tension, Hills Have Eyes, and Mirrors) were all somber and serious. The actors were all having a blast, with special props going to a Doc Brown channeling Christopher Lloyd, Wild Wild Girls director Jerry O'Connell (finally someone letting him ham things up), and Ving Rhames once again playing the badass (I hate that his best scene was ruined by the previews).

I've heard this movie had a tough time achieving the R rating, I'm frankly flabbergasted as to how some of the different scenes made it past the MPAA, and I can't believe what the eventual unrated director's cut will look like. On the bad side, all the characterization is straight out of film stereotypes 101, some of the jokes do fall a bit flat, and the first hour or so of the movie doesn't have much carnage at all. Also, wayy too many of the good scenes are ruined by the trailer, including the last shot of the movie! For the love of God, Hollywood, please stop showing the end of movies in the preview... But if you want some pure adult escapism, check out Piranha 3-D complete with not awful yet fun 3-D effects.

Updates on this blog

Okay,

If you look down through the archives, 2 long time posts that I've been working on and off on are finally up.

My top 7 movies from 2009 (finally!) and my top 7 directors/alternate cuts of movies (in April 2010).

I'm not sure why Blogspot does this, but my posts get posted in the order they got started, not the order I finish them in. I have a bad habit of starting lots of posts and not finishing any... so I apologize if it looks like I don't have any new content when I actually do.

Thanks.

Patrick

Inception vs. Predators

This will be about my feelings about Inception and Predators. Its tough to avoid spoilers when talking about Inception, so if you haven't seen it yet, don't read this. For Predators, I'll only address things seen in the trailers, so it won't be as spoilery. Jadia, you get my first blog post based on a facebook comment...




So first, Inception. Everyone and I mean everyone who had seen it told me it was amazing, best movie ever, I'd love it, etc. So I had massive expectations going in... that were mostly met. I thought the last forty five minutes or so of Inception were absolutely flawless. Great acting, innovative action, clever writing... Visually, it was crisp, clean, and didn't have any glaring CGI goofyness (I want to know how they shot some of the "hotel scene"... had to be some crazy green screen sets). The cast was all around excellent, from the comic relief provided by Tom Hardy to the stoic Ken Watanabe to a surprisingly layered Cillian Murphy (his character's emotional payoff was surprisingly moving) and a welcome return to the big screen by Tom Berenger (his first movie in 9 years!).

So why wasn't it a 10 out of 10. For one thing, the inconsistent logic with the "dream worlds." There's a scene towards the beginning of the climax where Joe GL's character is shooting at some far away henchmen with an automatic rifle and then Tom Hardy's character says "dream a little bigger" and blows away the henchmen with a rocket launcher. Its a cute moment, but there are a lot of times throughout the climax when said rocket launcher would come in handy, but conveniently no one else "dreams of it." Also, its established that Ellen Page's character can create the dream levels, but it seems like the end "levels" are a lot tougher than they need to be (that snow fortress could have been a little easier to infiltrate). She also moves stuff around a ton early in the movie, but conveniently forgets to do that later on (I know they say that it would make it obvious to Fischer that they were dreaming and make his projections more aggressive, but literally wrapping the city on itself seems like a huge advantage).

More so than the above plot holes, how easily Ellen Page's character figures out DiCaprio's character's inner psyche and problems. It makes Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character seem really stupid and dense that he never figured it out in years of working with DiCaprio. Its also really dumb for DiCaprio to involve himself as much as he does (why not just have JGL, Yusef, Hardy, and Page's characters go deep into the dream and take Yusef's role in the first dream) considering how mentally damaged he is. A lot of the plot events seem to happen to create tension because the script says so and not for any real logical reason.



By comparison, Predators overachieved my expectations. The original Predator was one of my favorite movies and was followed by a goofy yet flawed sequel and then two terrible spinoffs. Even with Robert Rodriguez's involvement I was skeptical on the quality of another sequel, especially when the announced cast featured action luminaries Adrien Brody and Topher Grace.

Predators felt like the 80s sequel that the original deserved. Like the original, all of the characters are fairly simple, the plot is easy to understand, there are a lot of big guns, and a lot of stuff gets blown up real good. With the exception of the Predadogs sequence early on, there is no CGI... the Predators are once again dudes in suits and there's a lot of practical stuntwork.

The difference between Predator and s is that the original had a cohesive team of special ops badasses while the new one has a squabbling team of different types of killers. It's a little stereotypical as far as the characters go. We get the intense black guy (but not as intense as Bill Dukes/Mac from the first), the angry latino (an underused Danny Trejo), the stoic honorable asian, the hick (who I recognized as Billy "Downtown" Anderson from Major League 3), the Topher Grace (playing Topher Grace), and more. Brody pulls out a Christian Bale/Batman gravelly voice, I'm impressed how he got himself into amazing physical shape, and seems really believable as the extremely quick and cool under fire protagonist.

So why wasn't this a perfect 10? Lawrence Fishburne's character was really goofy and only there for exposition. A lot of the scenes straddled the line between homages (there's a moment similar to the full on badassery when the Indian dude takes off his shirt from the first) and ripping off the original (did we really need another impossibly far drop off a huge waterfall?). The scene from the previews where a ton of Predator laser sights zero in on Brody, well, that isn't even in the movie ( I hate when movies shoot scenes only for the trailer). For my liking, we see too much of the Predators. Part of what made the original so awesome was that we don't see the Predator full on until the end, and although the prosthestics/suits look amazing, its still a dude in a suit. Plus, the 'civil war' aspect is underdeveloped and fairly weak (if they wanted to go that route, I'd have liked the movie to focus more on that).

So both movies I liked, both have strength and weaknesses, I'd recommend both and I thought Inception was better overall... But only just a little.

That's all I have to say about that.