Displaying Category: Review

Guy Ritchie rapes the very nature of Sherlock Holmes, turning him from an intellectual into a brawler to suit the tastes of an action-needy modern audience. Result: Fantastic Fun! I feel ashamed. There's no doubt that this movie was a great deal of fun. It actually deals a lot with Holmes' genius and how it prevents him from fitting in with the "normals" that inhabit his life. Still, it feels wrong watching him engaging in fight after fight with the calculating technique of a trained martial arts master (using a sort of brawling technique). I should also note that the relationship between Watson and Holmes very closely resembles the bro-mance JD and Turk in Scrubs. It is funny, but seems more than a little out of place in Victorian London.

4/5

Another fantastic live RiffTrax event, sadly now passed. This time, instead of a movie classic, we were treated to a series of shorts and commercials, all riffed by the trio including Weird Al Yankovic as a guest during one of the shorts. As you might have guessed, the shorts favored Christmas themes and generally followed fairly basic principles of getting the kids to sleep, treated them to some demented night time night terror featuring Santa, and then watching as they wake to a world twisted by their nightmares. Alright, probably a little more traditional than that, but I swear, these old-timey films are CREEPY! Seriously, I had no idea there was so much unintentional sexual innuendo in old films... And the treatment of women, it was like watching an episode of Madmen with less smoking and liquor and men with possibly red outfits and pillows under their jackets. Unfortunately, the weakest short of them all was the one in which Weird Al guest riffed. It wasn't holiday themed and basically just featured singing creepy guys making a pork dinner. *shrug*

Overall, I had a lot of fun, laughed a lot, and the audience was clearly into it, which always makes things better.

4/5

For those who aren't yet familiar with this movie, George Clooney stars as a man who's job is to fire people. The offshoot of this is that he spends most of his time flying around the country, and he likes it. He has gotten extremely good at knowing how to get through security the fastest, what perks he has available with the airlines and the rental car companies and he's working toward a "secret" goal of airline miles so he can be one of the seven people to ever achieve that number. In other words, he has no personal connections at all and this is how he wants it.

Over the course of the movie we see this character grow to see the value in more personal connections with other people. He starts to fall for someone and maybe wants more with her, but that would get in the way of the existence he's built up all these years. And then there's his sister's wedding that he can't quite figure out if he should even bother attending. Those are the basics, anyway, but the real issue here is whether I liked it. That would be a YES. It wasn't a comedy, but it has some very funny lines that produce more satisfying laughs than most true comedies can ever hope to manage. It's subtly emotional and really gets the viewer thinking about why it's important to have connections with others. The only part that really has me stammering is the ending. I'm not entirely sure why, after this satisfying journey, we ended up where we did. I don't know if it's good or bad, it's just not where I wanted to be, if that makes any sense. Regardless of that, it was still an exceptional movie.

5/5

In The Road, shit went down and most life on Earth has been wiped out. It's never entirely clear what the cause is, but that's really not important. The sky is filled with clouds and the global temperature has fallen. There isn't enough light getting through the clouds, so all plant life is dead. The food chain has broken down and all animal life, except for man, has died off. This story follows a father and his son as they walk the road, which I assume is a euphemism for life, and struggle to stay alive. The scenes cut between the father trying to teach his son how to survive and the pair's experiences with man's inhumanity to man. While the movie isn't nearly as graphic as the novel, it seems many of the important events are covered and the viewer gets just enough of set-up to understand what's going on. The worst of it is the cannibalism, which is a repeated source of horror and trauma to these travelers. I went into this movie expecting to come out in a deep state of depression. Actually leaving, I wouldn't say that I was bouncing on sunbeams, but I didn't feel that bad. The ending is just the slightest bit upbeat and hopeful, if there's any chance of hope living in a global apocalypse. On the downside, the movie felt s-l-o-w and very nearly boring for long stretches. That's probably because there wasn't much action or dialog or anything, really going on for most of the picture. I think that's kind of the point and I wouldn't entirely hold that against the movie as it did an excellent job of capturing the scene... It just made for a very slow movie that felt several hours longer than it's two hours would suggest.

3/5

The last time I saw Imogen was about three years ago at the 9:30 Club, and I was pleased to see that not much has changed. She put on an enchanting show three years ago and an even more magical show last night. There were two opening solo musicians. They were both loopers, like Imogen, but it's always exciting to see and listen to as a song is built up out of individual loops and effects. The first guy (and I am really sorry I don't remember their names) mostly built the loops off his guitar and keyboard and some pregenerated stuff on a computer. The second guy was much more into improvisation, vocalizing sounds and then manipulating them on the fly. At one point he grabbed a Saitek gaming joystick and walked out into the audience where he vocalized sounds and then manipulated them on the fly with the joystick. That was impressive.

Imogen's stage set up was actually quite similar to her show in 2006. She used the same piano/keyboard and different props, but for the same purpose, basically. Most of the songs she did were off her recent release, Ellipse, which I've been listening to in regular rotation for the last few weeks. It grew on me quickly and I was happy to see the songs performed live. Toward the end she brought a local cellist on stage to help out with a song and then to assist in an improvisational song. Finally, during the encore, Imogen got the audience to participate in two songs making for an exciting interactive experience.

Most of the photos I took weren't usable, but here are four decent shots.

4/5

Let me just say up front, I'm not familiar with the Roald Dahl book this movie is based on. I also probably shouldn't have seen this movie in the afternoon on a weekend. Lots of kids who don't know what an "indoor voice" is. The movie itself? I guess it was alright. A few "adult" jokes, but not really enough to hold my attention. Actually, I felt myself driving off three or four times. I feel like maybe there were some serious pacing issues? Probably. In technical terms, the stop motion animation felt, well, primitive, but it is fun to see something different. The voice acting was fine, but obviously couldn't carry the movie on its own. And what was the thing with the wolf at the end? Someone?

2/5

I don't think I have ever seen such creative and artistic ways to conduct mass slaughter with blades. There was slaughter in rain. Slaughter in fire. Slaughter on the highway. Slaughter in an old castle. Slaughter in darkened apartments. Slaughter in warehouses. Slaughter in a bar. I can't remember exactly, but I think that's pretty much it. On the downside, and not unexpectedly, the plot was weak. But hey, did I mention there's lots of slaughter?

3/5

I really have no idea why, when we get to our teen-aged years, we believe we have all the wisdom and experience we need to make significant life decisions. An Education is a movie about basically that scenario. A very bright 16 year old meets an older man and makes some rather uneducated decisions. Unfortunately, the grown-ups weren't entirely on the right page either and the only way to find out is to make the mistake. That is an education.

4/5

The thing is, I'm not sure what the point of this movie is. It's funny and kinda kooky and maybe they want you to think "Really? This is what the US government has been doing with my tax money?" or maybe there just wasn't a point. I came out confused because I couldn't decide if I had enjoyed myself or not. I really wanted to feel something about what was going on, but instead, it was just funny and kooky and that was it. Nothing emotional, nothing to get you thinking, no real drama, and in particular, a scene in which a soldier (on LSD and naked) starts shooting up an Army base (without actually hitting anyone) seemed unfortunately timed. So in the end, this movie was entertaining, but not especially interesting.

2/5

I spent yesterday at Busch Gardens Williamsburg with some friends, some were new, some were older. It's tough to say whether we were truly there for the rides or for the Howl-O-Scream experience, but I suppose it doesn't really matter in the long run, as we did both and had a great time with it all. The weather was fairly crappy, temps in the mid 40s to low 50s, overcast and toward the evening, constantly drizzling. The effect of this, though, was no lines to speak of. The park wasn't empty, but there weren't enough people to make anything feel crowded or to make wait times longer than ten minutes on any ride or haunted maze or food service.

I would say the haunted mazes were much better this year in terms of theme and execution (except for Revenge of Pompeii, I'm convinced anything in that space is forever going to suck ass). On the other hand, I thought the decorations around the park were pretty lame compared to last year's. Knowing what the range is, I am quite looking forward to next year's experience.