Ninja Assassin ( 2009 )

Starring: Rain, Ben Miles, Naomie Harris, Sho Kusugi & Sung Kang

Directed by James McTeigue

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1186367/

    
     James McTeigue was said to be a washout.  I had read a recent poll where his last film Invasion was listed as the 7th ranked Flop of all time.  I hope with the release of Ninja Assassin Mr. McTeigue can drop his pants and tell the Nay Sayers to suck it easy.

     Ninja Assassin is a solid 5 star action movie.  Everything about it is a solid hit.  From the lighting and visuals to the amazing fighting scenes.....wow....  I had thought going in Ninja Assassin would be nothing  more than a Violent version of Street Fighter.  I was wrong.

      The whole movie was an Orgasm for the eyes and ears.  I caught myself cheering and fist pumping to the limitless amount of raw carnage.  If you like crisp sounds to go with your kills, then prepare to for Bliss. If you also love Gallons and Gallons of fake blood then you are in for a treat.

     The story is as simple as could be, but with a new feel on an old subject.  Raizo (Rain) is taken off of the streets as an orphan, and Trained to become a Deadly Assassin for the Ozunu Clan.  After his horrific training becomes complete, Raizo must commit one more test before he totally accepted.  Raizo Refuses and is met with a hailstorm of violence and left for dead.

      Bad Mistake.  Raizo takes out countless Ninja Assassins trying to get to Ozunu ( Kusugi )and seek revenge for the hell Ozunu caused him.   All the while trying to stay under the radar from the German/Euro Police.  What sounds like a played out story is more than it lets on.

     For starters the violence is epic.  With every fight the viewer is treated to bone snapping sound, and relentless gore.  There is a TON of blood spilled.  It seems that the crew must've spent 3.5 Milion on fake blood.  Some is CG, but most of it is old school splash effect. 

      The second thing that grabs you is the sound.  Hearing Throwing stars whizz all around the Theater Sound System was, to say the least, Fucking Amazing!!!!  With every fight came at least  moments when the crowd would cheer, or cringe and then cheer.  Seeing that makes movies like this just an absolute blast!!!

      Folks this movie has it all.  If you want to sit back and enjoy a great movie with insane amounts of blood and violence mixed with a good story and sound, then by all means...GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!

Overall Rating ( * * * * * )

Mr. What?

The Road ( 2009 )

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Guy Pearce, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, & Charlize Theron

Directed By John Hillcoat

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0898367/


Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," a spare and grim allegory of father-love amid the ruins of human civilization (indeed, the ruins of humanity itself), was never going to make a quote-unquote 'fun' movie.  The despairing images of a dying planet Earth, the relentless threat of vicious predators, the pervasive grief for losses endured and those yet to manifest themselves:  it may have won a Pulitzer, but it's the type of art that it can be tough to drag folks into the multiplex to see.

And yet as directed by John Hillcoat from a screenplay by playwright Joe Penhall, "The Road" is faithful in tone and texture to McCarthy's painful vision and heartening in its moral fiber as well as in its artistic determination and mastery.  Hillcoat, who came to attention with the stark and bloody western "The Proposition," contrives hopefulness from despair and beauty from decay.  He spares little of the harshness of McCarthy's words but discovers a way to infuse his film with the undimmed spirit of them as well.

"The Road" takes the form of a southward odyssey through the badlands of the former United States of America.  A father and son, both unnamed, are forced to flee the oncoming winter because all the food and fuel and safety and comfort that once characterized their homeland have vanished in the wake of an unspecified catastrophe and the subsequent erosion and collapse of order and civility.

Viggo Mortensen, scruffy, hawk-eyed and resolute, plays The Man, as he is known, with a thoroughly convincing blend of fierceness, love, pity, mournfulness and -- though it is dying -- belief in something better.  Alongside him, if only in his reveries of the world before and just after the calamity, Charlize Theron makes you understand why The Man grieves so deeply.  And Kodi Smit-McPhee, a slip of a thing, credibly fills their son, known only as The Boy, with guileless innocence and earnest filial devotion.

In the course of their travels, the protagonists encounter dangerous men (including a predatory Garrett Dillahunt) and really dangerous men (such as a house full of sadists and cannibals), and men as lost and nostalgic and helpless in the teeth of fate as they themselves (crabby Robert Duvall, desperate Michael K. Williams from "The Wire").

The landscape through which they wend -- grey and looming and pocketed with tempting perils such as abandoned houses and shops -- is as alive as any of the people they meet.  "The Road" was shot in, among other places, Oregon and Washington, including on the slopes of Mt. St. Helens, and never has our lovely green northwest looked so infernal and uninviting.

In fact, Hillcoat has achieved a kind of uncanny tone with the feel and pace of the film -- dreamy and portentous and conveying the weight and horror of a world terribly and permanently altered.  Given the relative lack of incident in “The Road,” its tenor and style are as important as its characters and events, and while that can be an invitation to directorial indulgence, Hillcoat restrains his potency in order to create his own worthy version of McCarthy's world.

“The Road” walks a tremendously daring and delicate line between inspiration and horror, and it does so not only in the events it depicts but in its very air and atmosphere.  It was unforgettable on the page, and it impresses equally, or at least it does so remarkably often, on screen.

Overall Rating ( * * * * )

Mr. What?

The Twilight Saga: New Moon ( 2009 )

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Anna Kendrick, & Tayor Lautner

Directed By Chris Weitz

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259571/


     First off Let me say that this movie was Horrible.  I felt like chopping my dick off, and throwing it into the river after viewing this film.  I painfully watched Twilight and couldn't stop rolling my eyes.  Vampires who walk amongst the midst & Sparkled, no blood or gore, and massive undead virginity issues made for a solid laugh.  That is, until the rest of the nation fell under the Twilight spell. 

     Everywhere you looked Twilight was there.  Grocery Stores, Malls, Clothing Stores, ETC, ETC.  At first I just ignored it, but after having 3-4 tweens get into my face about my views I decided to fight back with Harsher words and Semi-Violence.  Team Cullen gear was everywhere and being shoved onto the word despite the Massive Outrage from the Horror Movie Community.

     Alot of Movies had a newish spin on Vampires, but nothing as lame as Twilight.  Maybe it was because of the authors Religious beliefs ( Mormon ), or The fact that Hollywood needed something to fill the void of The Harry Potter Series, I don't know for sure.  What I do know is that Twilight was, and still is Hated and Loved World wide.

     As I geared up for the review, I knew that I had to be open minded and non-biased against this movie as I am with every movie I review.  As far as the story goes for New Moon.......Bella and Edward are "in love" and happy.  Alice ( edwards sister ) throws Bella a party for her 18th birthday.  All is fine until Bella cuts her finger while trying to cut some cake and sends a Cullen family member into a blood lust and attacks Bella.  Fearing the the Worst Edward packs up the clan and moves out of Forks Washington for Bella's safety....

     Here is where the movie tanked.  Bella spends too much time being EMO and hating life.  It felt like watching a love story on morphine. The lighting, acting, and sets took on this cheesy wannabe dark tone, and left the viewer longing for a fight, or some hate sex. Then along comes Jacob.  Dark and full of mystery, Bella begins a friendship with him and his secret as a.....you guessed it...a werewolf. Jacob was another letdown.  Maybe it's me, but seeing Sharkboy try to be seductive was anything but hot.  I did see a gay couple cuddle during Jacobs scenes, and made me think.......Could this guy ever star in a Gay Porn?

     The rest of the movie is....well, really bad.  If you read the books and hated Twilight the movie, then this will be the same amount of Bullshit.  Alot was left out for the movie adaptation.  I often found myself asking "is this based off of New Moon the book, or some lose version made into a crappy movie for tweens?"  Nothing about this movie was made for anybody over the age of 12.  Yes, there is some decent fighting, but too much of the movie is spent with Bella acting bummed out and dreary.

     All in All this was a total waste of money and time.  If you must witness this film in theaters the please be warned:  This movie is slow and boring.

Overall Rating ( * )

Mr. What?

2012 ( 2009 )

Starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Eliofor, Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson, & Oliver Platt

Directed By Roland Emmerich

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190080/


Near the beginning of the drawn-out finale of "2012," one of the countless doomed victims of global catastrophe turns to our hero, Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), and says, "You're a lucky man, Jackson." Truer words were never spoken.

The seemingly hapless Curtis manages to dodge nearly every form of disaster-movie death known to Hollywood -- fire, flood, falling, volcanic eruption, spewed sewage -- but he does so through no apparent skill of his own.

He also manages to make his way from Los Angeles to the climactic events in the Himalayan Mountains through a series of absurdly far-fetched chance encounters (Hey, look! A gigantic Russian cargo jet! How handy!) But that's not all: The cataclysm that kills nearly everyone on Earth doesn't merely spare Jackson Curtis, it allows him to prosper.

After all, there's nothing like the fruition of apocalyptic Mayan soothsaying to bring a divorced dad back in the familial fold. The optimistic credo that Curtis, a failed writer, espouses in his science fiction novel turns out to be true as well, so his career ends up primed for a boost.

Of course, "2012," like all the disaster movies it draws from and seeks to one-up, spits in the face of such observations. Too many unexplained coincidences? Dialogue so purple it would make Prince blush? One-dimensional characters? Soulless scenes of mass carnage interspersed with cloying, manipulative dialogue or rapid-fire exposition? Shopworn supporting roles such as Woody Harrelson's wacky conspiratorial radio host and Danny Glover's noble president? Well, what did you expect? It's a disaster movie.

True enough, and part of the appeal is the way director Roland Emmerich, no stranger to the genre ("Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow"),  faithfully fulfills expectations.

It seems, as per ancient Mesoamerican prediction, that the Earth is doomed in the year 2012, thanks to huge solar flares heating the planet's core, leading eventually to free-floating tectonic plates. And that's never a good thing. Politicians (including oily cynic Oliver Platt) and scientists (especially heroic and principled Chiwetel Ejiofor) secretly race to deal with the impending badness, while Cusack, on a camping trip with his two kids, stumbles -- there's that luck again -- onto the truth. He gathers up his ex-wife (Amanda Peet) and her new husband (Tom McCarthy)  and the five of them manage to get out of Los Angeles just before California slides into the sea.

That sequence, which has formed the basis for much of the film's marketing, is the most impressive, mostly because it's the last time the destruction occurs on anything close to a human scale.

For years now, disaster movie auteurs have been upping the ante of destruction. In the 1970s, it was sufficient for several hundred souls to perish in "The Poseidon Adventure," but thanks to Emmerich and his ilk, nothing less than extinction-level events will do the trick these days.

Unfortunately, wrestling with the concept of humanity as an endangered species is more gripping than trying to depict it onscreen. No matter how many aircraft carriers get swept onto the White House, no matter how many mega-volcanoes burst forth from Yellowstone Park, no matter how many ancient basilica domes collapse onto worshipping masses, none of them are as satisfying as a limousine careening under and through collapsing skyscrapers.

Although "2012" is what they call "critic-proof," it's not immune to analysis. It depicts a world where no one, man or God, has much say in what happens to the planet, and where the survival of one family outweighs the deaths of billions. What does that say about us? Audiences who pay money to see "2012" and come away disappointed in its refusal to address such ideas should keep in mind the movie's tagline: We were warned.

Overall Rating ( * * )

Mr. What?

Gentlemen Broncos ( 2009 )

Starring: Michael Angarano, John Baker, Robin Ballard, Steve Berg, & Jemaine Clement

Directed By Jared Hess

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1161418/



Jared Hess is a vexing talent.  It's clear that the director-cowriter of "Napoleon Dynamite," "Nacho Libre" and the new "Gentlemen Broncos" is a born filmmaker in the sense that he can compose scenes and sequences, command the frame and flow, see things in his own way and then render them to an audience.  It's also clear that his taste for the jejune and outre limits him and that his desire to seek edges and break rules force him into corners and self-satisfied oddity.

It's tempting to read Hess into the protagonist of "Broncos," young, shy Benjamin (Michael Angarano), a home-schooled Utah boy whose widowed mother (Jennifer Coolidge) designs ghastly clothes and has no idea how difficult her idiosyncrisies have made life for her son.  Benjamin writes sci-fi novels and aspires to the stature of Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement), a legendary (and egoistical) author and illustrator of epic fantasy series.  Benjamin attends a writing seminar at which Chevalier will be a judge and meets an unlikely pair of local entrepreneurs who make films out of unpublished manuscripts.  He winds up with his newest work, "Yeast Lords," shamelessly coopted by his hero and his new friends and his only allies being his daffy mom and her new beau (Mike White).

Inside this load-o-quirk, Hess stuffs three re-enactments of "Yeast Lords": the one in Benjamin's head, the one in Chevalier's head, and the film-within-the-film made by Benjamin's new friends.  They're all needlessly daffy (Sam Rockwell plays over the top in two of them, to give you the gist) and Hess amps up the oddity of the so-called 'real world' of the film as if trying to balance out these warped fantasies.  It's a desperate game of one-upmanship with himself, and it wears you out -- and not with laughter.

There are pleasures in the film.  Clement ("Flight of the Concords") makes a wonderfully pompous presence, crossing James Mason, the young Orson Welles and Dr. Evil, and Hess's compositional and editing skills haven't deserted him (the opening credits sequence -- a series of mock paperback covers -- is brilliant).  But as the struggle toward something new and different overwhelms the film, it becomes less and less human, less and less funny and less and less worth the effort to meet it on its own terms.  Hess is an auteur, yes, but even auteurs need little angels on their shoulders telling them when enough is enough.

Overall Review ( * * )

Mr. What?

Antichrist ( 2009 )

Starring: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Directed By Lars von Trier

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870984/

That “Antichrist” can shock, appall, outrage and disgust as much as it does is perverse testament to writer-director Lars von Trier, a man of outsized passions and talents and underdeveloped humanity and empathy.  More than most of his work, this arthouse horror film teems with misogyny, cruelty and childish spite.  It’s also, damnably, quite well made.

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe lose a child to a tragic (yet beautifully rendered) accident and then suffer devastating waves of guilt and grief.  He (neither has a proper name) is a therapist and rather rashly decides to counsel her through her anguish.  They retreat to a cabin in the woods which, inevitably, is surrounded by dark forces and filled with objects that can be used as weapons by, say, a woman in the throes of inchoate sensations of loss and lust.

Infamously, Gainsbourg inflicts grueling tortures on Dafoe and herself, and they’re as bad as you can imagine, and you will not easily forget them.  But, too, you won’t easily forget the very real feelings of sensuality and trauma at the heart of the film.  At the same time, you may not forget or, indeed, forgive the palpable contempt that von Trier holds for his heroine -- for all women, in fact, as it seems.  There’s a lot of hate in this film.  But a lot of talent, too.  It borders on despicable, but you can’t ignore it.

Overall Rating ( * * * )

Mr. What?

The Fourth Kind ( 2009 )

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Will Patton, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, & Corey Johnson

Directed By Olatunde Osunsanmi

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1220198/


As movie-selling gimmicks go, "The Fourth Kind" has a fairly good one.

Let's see if we can explain this. The film opens as star Milla Jovovich walks up to the camera, introduces herself as "actress Milla Jovovich" and tells us we're about to watch a docudrama about a real alien-abduction researcher named Dr. Abigail Tyler.

Jovovich then spends the rest of the movie as Tyler, a woman who comes to believe that aliens are terrorizing Nome, Alaska, residents, including her. Among the skeptics is the county sheriff, played by Will Patton, who gives the same furious ham-and-cheese performance he rocked in "The Postman."

This supposed re-enactment is intercut with supposed "actual interviews" and "archived audio," recorded by the supposedly real Dr. Tyler. There's even an "actual" video Q&A with Tyler, supposedly recorded years after the Alaskan events. The poor doctor is as pale as an actor slathered in makeup and speaks in a traumatized monotone that might be mistaken for an on-the-nose line reading if it weren't, you know, "real."

Anyhoo. Get past the distracting "is it or isn't it?" nonsense, and "Fourth Kind" has its moments.

There are some slightly unnerving shots of owls and a couple of hypnotic-regression sessions gone bone-snappingly wrong. I like very much that writer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi has no intention of giving us a clear look at his alien menace. He also has some meta fun with a few split-screen shots that contrast his "documentary" and "re-enacted" footage.

Unfortunately, the story finally gets too silly to believe, even if you Want to Believe. There's too much unnecessary psychologically muddled stuff involving the death of Tyler's husband, plus some final-act foolishness that's basically the equivalent of a doctor who treats broken necks by asking someone to break her neck so she can better understand the injury.

The movie's carnival-barker hard sell is that it's after The Truth. It's really after an opening-weekend gross, of course. It's sporadically clever and chilling, but I'll be shocked if it endures as a "Blair Witch"-style horror vérité phenomenon.

Overall Rating ( * * * )

Mr. What?

The Men Who Stare At Goats ( 2009 )

Starring: Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, and Ewan McGregor

Directed By Grant Heslov

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234548/


If you can measure the influence of artists by the number of ill-starred imitations their work inspires, then “The Men Who Stare at Goats” testifies to the glory of the Coen brothers. 

Deploying a goofy George Clooney, a long-haired, Dude-ish Jeff Bridges, and Coen regular Stephen Root, combining an outlandish story with slapstick violence, aiming for a balance of cold-eyed satire and cockeyed whimsy, the film too often feels strained and desperate, a high school musical version, in a way, of something more precisely distilled.  It’s like a movie the Coen boys conceived and then abandoned as too slight.

Director Grant Heslov’s film is based on a non-fiction account of a cold-war era US Army intelligence unit that attempted to use New Age training to create a cadre of super soldiers.  The effort was abandoned, but our protagonist, a journalist played by Ewan McGregor, finds threads of it still informing various operations in today’s Iraq War.

There are moments of levity throughout the film, but it’s made with pedestrian craft and feels more like a set-up and a series of vignettes than a compelling yarn.  Chiefly, it demonstrates just how accomplished the Coens are even when their films seem offhanded and easy.

Overal rating ( * * 1/2 )

-Mr. What?

The Stitcher: Unrated - DVD (2007)

VCI Entertainment

http://www.vcient.com
 

Director: Darla Enlow

Starring: Scott Gaffen, Carmen Garrison, Justin Boyd, Heather Surdukan, Christopher Rowe, Laurel Williamson, Celeste Cash & Mike Kelley

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1141274/

 "Fear is not created, it's sewn in", that's the tagline for this little okie terror. Basic plot... a bunch of friends meet up at a house in the woods and get picked off one by one in B-Movie slasher style. The killer in this flick is a sick little hillbilly that takes to sewing buttons into his skin every time he does the dead.

 More comedy than horror this flicks got a bevy of dumb bitches waiting to die, dumbass stoners and over-the-top hillbillies that don't believe in bathing. The only thing it's lacking in is the blood and the boobs. They definitly could have upped the gore factor, but it still doesn't detract from an entertaining film. Don't quite understand how this is an "unrated" version though.

 DVD Extra's include music videos by Radioradio & Darkset Theory, bloopers, photo gallery, making of featurette & a digital comic book of Carthage, the short film that became Stitcher. Commentary can be found in the set-up menu.

Verdict: * * * 1/2

- Xtoph

Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450405/

Director: Paul Weitz

Starring: John C. Reilly, Chris Massoglia & Josh Hutcherson

 Alright... this one is pretty good. Kind of like Buffy The Vampire Slayer for a slightly younger set. Meet Darren, a mama's boy that always does what he's told who has a hard-on for spiders. Then meet Steve, his best friend and polar opposite. Circus sideshow comes through town and the boys sneak out to go watch. There they meet a vampire that Steve recognizes from his vampire book. Steve tries to get him to turn him, but gets refuses. Darren steals his spider. Blah, blah, blah, stuff happens, Darren gets made into the vampire's assistant & Steve gets recruited by his enemies the Vampinese. Darren goes on the road with the circus sideshow and learns how to become a "good" vamp, while Steve gets to be bad. Titans clash, epic battle happens and sets the stage for many sequels to come.

 That's the gist of it. Based off of some kid's books that I have not read. This movie was a blast though. Much better than wasting your cash on the latest Saw. It takes you back to being a kid, when Halloween was cool and anything dark made you happy. Not really much else to say. Can't wait for the next in the franchise.

Verdict: * * * *

- Al B. Damned

The Stepfather (2009)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814335/

Director: Nelson McCormick

Starring: Dylan Walsh, Sela Ward, Penn Badgley & Amber Heard

 Well here it is... another crappy remake of another not so great 80's horror flick. In this one a dude rolls into town starts hitting on some single mom's trying to piece together the perfect family from someone else's leftovers. He picks up a chick and has her wrapped around his finger in no time. Older son comes home from military school and things don't go as well... Stepdaddy flips his shit and the fun never really begins...

 It's boring and predictable, even if you have not seen the original or it's sequels. PG-13. No blood, no flesh, no script worth a damn... but at least is was still more entertaining than sorority row.

 Really... save this one for late night cable when it's free and you can't sleep... it should help...

Verdict: * *

- Al B. Damned