Brain Tilt

Finally saw Spiderman 3.  And I have to say: it sucked.   I’ll try to keep this brief.

For starters, they wasted the 3 villains in this movie.  And I say wasted because there are rumors that the Raimi brothers are going to make 6 of these.  To do six movies about the same superhero, you need villains that the general public will recognize.  Beyond the Goblin, Doc Oc, the Hobgoblin, Venom and Sandman, you don’t have many characters that non-comic book readers will recognize.  So to cram those last three into the same movie is a complete waste.   There is no real character development on Sandman or Venom, so the viewer ends up not really caring about them.  Throw in the fact that with 3 villains, you have to split screen time between them and you end up with what amounts to bit parts for Thomas Hayden Church and Topher Grace.  The only reason Harry had any substance to him was because we’ve followed him through the 2 previous movies.

Add in the fact that we are also having to explore the dark side of Spiderman, and it simply becomes overwhelming.  Each character only scratches the surface and we never really delve into them enough to give a damn about them.

This movie also had a lot more cheese in it than the previous ones.  To make look Peter Parker look tough (after he puts on the black Spiderman suit), he does a disco dance as he walks down the street.  I actually thought that I was watching an updated version of West Side story.  Add that to the dance scene in the club and Peter brushing his bangs in his eyes to denote his toughness and you get an obscene amount of cheese for an action movie.  (Harry acing like a complete tool didn’t help matters either.)

Bottom line, too many villains and too much cheese make this Spiderman one worth waiting for on DVD.

After watching Snakes on a Plane last night, I decided to wait before positng my thoughts on it, since I couldn’t believe what I had just watched. I figured that if I waited until today and let things marinate, I might be able to articulate my thoughts on this movie.

Not the case.

In fact, I don’t think that there is anything I can say about this movie that will do it justice. It ranges from the absolutely absurd (one dude gets bitten on the penis; hundreds of exotic, poisonous snakes end up on a plane, etc.) to the comically bad (anything that comes out of Samuel L. Jackson’s mouth). And yet, the actors and the director were somehow able to combine the most ridiculous plot with laughably bad acting and make a movie that is not entirely terrible. Don’t get me wrong, this will never win any kind of award, but it’s not horrible.

Who knew that I would enjoy Snakes on a Plane this much??

I don’t even know what to say right now.  I just finished watching Snakes on a Plane and I don’t even know what to say.

I feel the need to somment, but I might have to wait until the morning to do so.

Ghost Rider = Crap

The only redeming thing is that the director made every effort to display Eva Mendes’ breasts.

Wow.  I had forgotten how bad this movie was.

It’s two hours of George Lucas showing off all the stuff ILM can do and how poorly he writes.  It’s also two hours Lucas making the Jedi’s, some of the coolest people in the galaxy in the original 3 movies, look like complete idiots.  They really don’t know that Anakin is bad??  Really??  And they can’t tell that he is breaking almost every code of the Jedi by being married to and impregnating Padme??  Damn.  Just look in their closet and you’ll see his clothes!!!  It’s not that hard to figure out.  And their idea of protecting the twins is to send one with a Senator the emperor is hunting and the other to Anakin’s family??   I can’t stand that Lucas makes all the Jedi look like incompetent jack asses.

It’s also two hours of Lucas trying to fit the back story to match what happens in the original 3.  It just doesn’t make for a good story.  And did we really need Chewbacca in there??  What was the point of that??

Basically, it’s two hours of crap.  I could edit it down to about one hour and tell a better story that makes more sense than the piece of junk Lucas threw together.

Wow.  This is hard to believe.

The Producers (2005)

Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Uma Thurman, Will Ferrell

Um. This movie sucked. I was ready to shoot myself in the face about 15 minutes in.

I thought Mel Brooks made good movies???

The Manhattan Project (1986)

John Lithgow, Christopher Collet

Another 80’s movie. Sweet.

Unlike The Last Starfighter, this movie really did suck.

Why is it that in movies like this, high security government buildings can be broken into by teenagers?? Is that realistic at all?? The main character breaks in using NAIL CLIPPERS and FRISBEES. And what kind of building with high tech, top secret stuff employs one inept, 86 year-old security guard??

After he breaks in, the kid steals highly toxic materials (which he handles wearing nothing but rubber KITCHEN GLOVES) using a remote control car. What the hell is that?? Why didn’t he just carry all that toxic crap out in his bag to begin with??

I also don’t get why the nerdy guys in these 80’s high school movies end up with the hot chicks. That is NOTHING like real life. In my high school, the nerdy kid who could have built his own atomic bomb routinely got the crap kicked out of him by my 12 year old sister. No high school girl would every think that was cute or in any way attractive.

After the kid gets caught and is being interrogated by the government, several of his nerdy peers break him out of the hotel room by turning off the lights and spraying the feds with fire extinguishers. Are we really supposed to believe this??

And for god’s sake, the atomic bomb he builds runs on Duracell batteries.

I hate it when movies think I’m stupid.

The Last Starfighter (1984)

Lance Guest, Catherine Mary Stewart

I remember watching this movie when I was a kid and thinking it was one of the greatest movies of all time.

I must have done drugs as a kid.

Not really. I think this falls into the category of “This movie was awesome in the 80’s before sweet graphics started to kick ass and make crappy movies at least look cooler.” Actually, this movie was the first movie to have all its special effects (except explosions) done on the computer.

Most every scene around the video game machine and scenes involving Maggie and Alex rate incredibly high on the unintentional scale. The writing is awful. Character development is terrible. And it’s just sad that an entire trailer park rallies around a kid who is going to break the high score on a video game.

I really think watching this movie again now has ruined it for me. Because really, most movies that you thought were awesome in the 80’s really sucked. And it’s because when you were a kid, everything seemed cooler. Especially when it was projected onto a screen that seemed like it was 100 miles high.

While you may look back on this movie and think it’s not as cool as you thought it was, you can at least remember it as the movie that launched Lance Guest’s to B-Star status.

Batman Begins (2005)

Christian Bale, Katie Holmes, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson

You know who is a pretty bad ass actor?? Christian Bale. He makes an excellent new Batman and I really like the direction they are taking with this series of movies. The first round (with Keaton as Batman) of Batman movies ended up being over the top cartoonish towards the end and basically sucked. The newer movies make it easier for me to suspend disbelief and enjoy the movie.

You know who is a horrible actress?? Katie Holmes. How the hell does this girl keep getting acting jobs?? She uses the George Clooney method of acting: play the same damn character in everything you do. She is basically Joey Potter in this movie. I fully expected her to tell Bale at the end of the movie that she loved him but was leaving him for Dawson or Pacey. Seriously, you make an ass load of money: SPEND SOME OF IT ON ACTING CLASSES!!!!

If you can get past the monumental task of tolerating Holmes, you’ll enjoy the first int he new Batman series.