Iron Man is Tron 2

I would love the first Iron Man movie so much more if it were just Tron 2 and Jeff Bridges' character is still Flynn but old and busted, trying to ride the coattails of Tony Stark in the meatverse.

Although I could live with it if the movie retained the Uruguay title - El hombre de hierro

What am I watching? Chopping Mall!

Context!

Chopping Mall, aka Killbots - released in 1985, the same year as Short Circuit, one year before Robocop and giving neither movie a run for their money. Jim Wynorski, a director mired in crap 80s horror schlock, destined to make even worse exploitation flicks like “The Bare Wench Project”. I’ve only seen the third in that series, but.. oh.. dear god.. there aren’t enough bare wenches in the world to make that crap watchable.

This was one of those movies that were always forbidden fruit. I’d look at the box art in West Coast Video as I was thinking about what computer game I wanted to rent, dreaming about what it could be about. Cursed to never know what laid on that magnetic tape!

The budget is nowhere near allowing convincing miniatures or full sized animatronics. Apparently these ‘killbots’ consist of moving treads and three points of articulation in a rotating head, rotating torso, and clacking claw. What a far cry from the remote control masterpiece of Johnny 5 (although all the different aspects of Johnny 5 probably belonged to discrete animatronics used for different scenes).

The acting? Not horrible. After catching some stinkers like The Room, and Troll 2, this, in its adequacy, is almost Shakespeare in comparison. Nobody is chewing on the scenery or hamming it up too much.

Things I love about the movie:
- The sporting goods store is well stocked with shotguns, M-14s, Magnums, and plenty of easy access ammo.
- Iranian lessons that sexuality and promiscuity lead, not to earthquakes, but murderous robots that want to set you on fire. A common theme of 80s slasher films, but true all the same.
- This is essentially every Michael Crichton story writ small. Technology is going to turn on us and we’re all going to die! This would have been pretty amusing if it were dinosaurs running amok in the mall.
- Mom jeans used to be in fashion!

Disappointment in this movie:
- No chopping.

The plot doesn’t matter too much. It opens with a demonstration of the state of the art in mall security – “This will be the safest mall in the country!” Although who knows what kind of crime spree must be going on that mall security needs lasers, C4, tasers, and claws. Lightning hits the building and apparently turns the bots ED-209 lethal instead of Johnny 5 loveable. Isn’t this kind of how Robo Rally started?

A teenage after hours party at the mattress store starts to go wrong as the partiers are taken out one by one. Eventually the only ones left are the nerdy new couple that just met that night! To spoil the ending – who survives? THE GUY AND GIRL WHO DIDN’T PUT OUT. This movie has to be huge in Iran.

I feel like I’ve crossed one thing off my bucket list after having seen this. Aside from that there’s pretty much no reason for anybody to watch this movie. Ever.. Ooh, wait! Director and writer commentary! Guess who’s watching this again!

BONUS CONTENT:
Jim Wynorski, the director of this flick has gone on to the fresh new millennium with what have to be a series of further morality plays:
- The Bare Wench Project
- Busty Cops
- The Witches of Breastwick
- Cleavagefield
- Para-Knockers Activity

And a documentary - Popatopolis - made about Wynorski while filming Witches of Breastwick:

What am I watching? Drop Dead Fred

Oh, Netflix streaming.. You've taken the place of all the late night or off hour movie filler that tv used supply in spades.

Trying to watch through Drop Dead Fred partially because Phoebe Cates was really really cute and partially because the movie is bizarre(I've only seen her in Gremlins 1,2 previously).  Sadly, it's also freaking annoying.  At least the first half.  That's about where I had to turn it off the first time through.  It's just too screwball comedy except that everything can't just be cleared up with a simple explanation between the parties involved.  Phoebe's character actually *tries* to explain what is happening, it's just ridiculous.  Ah, well.  I can make it through.  I can be strong.  It's not as bad as Armageddon.

Weird part of the movie?  The younger version of the main character is a spitting image for my wife at the same age.

Random factoid when reading back on Phoebe Cates - she married Kevin Kline when she was 26 and he was 40.  Good god!  What an age difference!  No slight on either of them, I just can't imagine being married to what would, with the same relative age for me, be a 15 year old.

Yadda yadda.  The beat goes on.  And so it goes.

Still debating what I'm going to rate this movie.

Tin Man

Ah, subscription services.. How I missed thee.

Just received Tin Man, the Sci-Fi reimagining of Wizard of Oz, from Netflix this week. I really didn't expect it to be such a disappointment. I love me some Zooey Deschanel(she was one of the only redeeming points of the HHGTG movie), but this was a stinker for her. The casting on this mini-series may have been good, but the directing sure wasn't. There's something I can't quite put my finger on whenever Sci-Fi does these miniseries.. There's some quality to the effects and the shots that Lauren correctly calls as 'like you're watching a video game'. The actors seem to all have been subject to the lobotomy that Glitch was..

If only Psych had shown up in the mail yesterday..

BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER

RIFFTRAX VS CINEMATIC TITANIC

I really think that Cinematic Titanic is a bit lame. I liked the shadows in MST3K, but they really seem lost trying to come up with physical motions for all the stuff they say. The Josh Elvis Weinstein guy in the upper left has the worst delivery. The lines just aren't that funny. I know I'm basing this off of just 'Doomsday Machine', but I'm pretty familiar with this group's M.O.

Rifftrax, on the other hand, really benefits from that parasitic relationship with big budget movies. Just watched Star Trek 5 last night for the first time and I don't think I could have watched the whole thing without those guys helping me along. (let alone Lauren making it through that crap) There were a lot of beans and pants filling jokes, though..

On Rifftrax I can safely say I've tried a variety of their work. From the original Willy Wonka, to Jurassic Park, to the Indiana Jones movies, and Star Trek.

Just got back from Batman.

First, the Watchmen trailer made every hair on my body stand on edge.

Second, I believe Lauren has come down with post-movie stress disorder. Dark Knight was just too stressful for her to watch.

Third, while the movie was quite excellent I hope that there is minimal emulation of this in future movies. High quality, complex ethics, but zero fun. I'm not sure if I could watch it again even for IMAX. I was more exhausted after this than I was with Children of Men..

100 - Ben-Hurrrrrrrr

Our progress on the AFI top 100 list feels like it's going well. We were puzzled when, on our two disc plan, with one movie already out, we received two more discs in the mail last week. It turns out that biblical epic and number 100 on the AFI list, Ben-Hur is epically long. The first disc covers the first two and a half hours, up through the intermission. Yep, it's got an intermission. Disc 2 is the next hour and a half.

I'm 95% sure that I've seen this movie before, but it was definitely Lauren's first go with it. I think she did a little better with staying conscious through it. Not that the first disc is that rough! It's a beautiful movie, with stellar production values. From reading up on it, it was apparently MGM's hail mary. They were going down the tubes and had enough money for one big movie, so they pegged it all on Charlton Heston's big gay adventure.

OK, yeah, the movie doesn't HAVE to be about a gay relationship between a Roman and a Jew in biblical times, but it sure as hell seems like it. Once you get that idea in your head, it's impossible to get out. I guess I just went and ruined the movie for you..

Basic plot - Roman guy returns to Judea after having rocketed through the ranks in the Roman empire, faces pacifying an angry Jewish population. He tries to lever his old 'relationship' with Judah Ben-Hur into a few names that he can crack down on in the resistance and sends any good will down the tubes. After an incident involving a loose tile falling on the incoming Roman governor is pinned on Ben-Hur, Roman Marsalla makes an example of him by imprisoning his mother and sister while banishing Judah to the galley of a Roman warship. Begin revenge story!

Advice on the movie - definitely see it, but not when sleepy or short on time. Make sure to fast forward through the intro music - it's 6.5 minutes of orchestral interlude on a static background. The same applies to the intermission music. Be ready for a lot of movie after the seeming climax - there's still the whole Jesus aspect of the movie to deal with.

I don't think it's a movie that could be made the same way today. The chariot race at the circus is impressive and should blow away any but the most jaded viewer. Put in the hands of any of the likely directors these days would result in a mishmash of rapid cuts, too much CGI, and a hollow experience. The real deal uses real crowds, a real set, and supposedly one real death - see if you can spot it!

One sentence assessment? Classic, epic, never to be redone the same way, story of revenge in the time of Jesus.

94 - Pulp Fiction

We continue our attack on the AFI Top 100 films with number 94, Pulp Fiction.

This one was easy to do, since I already own it. The problem, though, was it was already 11 when we started and I'm a huge wuss now. I guess that's what happens when you start work at 8am every day and you're used to 8 hours of sleep.

I've already seen this movie a bunch of times, and I love it. It helps that I was 15 when this movie came out - this is a movie that blows any teenager's mind and in my case is close to perfection. I don't know how much I feel of that now, but it's still pretty good. I have definitely fallen out of love with Quentin Tarantino, though. Watching the first half of Kill Bill I swore I could hear him just masturbating furiously in the background because that's essentially what that movie was. I never did bother to see the second half..

Lauren, not so much a fan of the non-linear timeline in Pulp Fiction. I think it makes the movie a bit more interesting and definitely adds to it the first time you see it. I personally think that Tarantino, like Kevin Smith, is a lot more interesting when working with limited resources - see also Reservoir Dogs. This movie relied on dialogue, which was great, story, which was still interesting, and the actors. Big thumbs up on all of that. Also, the soundtrack of this totally kicks ass - see also Reservoir Dogs.

Considering the ripple effect that this movie had on the industry since it's premiere, I can definitely see why it made it onto the AFI list. However, it's not a movie that I'm going to be like "man, I can't wait to show this to my kids." Actually, it would be pretty cool to show to *older* kids, but also not the kind of movie that they would feel comfortable watching with me.

I once saw a commercial on WGN about how they were going to be showing Pulp Fiction on broadcast TV. I would almost pay money now to see exactly how they shoehorned that movie into FCC broadcast regulations. I think they probably would have had to get new voice actors to record an entirely new dialogue track. Possibly they would have spliced in some old cartoons to distract you from the extended scenes that were just unshowable.

It begins - French Connection

So,

Lauren and I are embarking upon watching all of the AFI Top 100 movies.

Our first movie off the list is #93, The French Connection.

It primarily features an impossibly young Gene Hackman in a proto buddy cop movie role. Some French businessman tries to orchestrate a huge drug trafficking route into New York but Hackman and his partner stand against him.

I've got to say, having seen American Gangster, this movie is both awesome and way better than American Gangster. Gangster was kind of boring in the end - we were all kind of just waiting for it to end. French Connection is just plain more interesting.

It's great watching chase scenes like this movie has - from what I've heard there was no permission from New York nor any warning to the traffic on the street that anything was planned. So this car with a camera mounted on it, a cameraman in the back seat, and a little police dome light on top, go flying through heavy traffic chasing an elevated train. It's allegedly the best car chase scene ever - I'm not sure about that, but I don't feel like it was overhyped actually seeing it for myself.

I've got to say that I loved the ambiguity of the very ending when Hackman leaves camera while pursuing Frog One and you hear a single gun shot. Did he kill the guy and hide the body? Was it just anger? A great note to end on.

Overall assessment - There are movies that make me angry and feel like I've literally wasted those hours of my life. This movie was at the other end of the spectrum - I feel it was well spent time and the movie has aged extremely well. American Gangster has nothing on this.

Three stinkers and a redemption

3 days for the weekend, three movies. Three wastes of time but a redemption on the third.

First off was Friday with The Golden Compass. Bleh. Lauren gobbled up all three of the books in the series in the course of a week and she loved them. I had avoided them to see how the movie seemed without. I still somehow managed to have a moment watching the movie where I really thought to myself "Man, the book was way better than this.." before I managed to catch the fact that I hadn't even tried them.. I don't think it's too promising that we showed up after the movie was supposed to start and had no problems finding a seat in the middle of the theater.

Overall - No context for story in the movie - everything seemed a little arbitrary in the plot, and the compass is a little too convenient. Why did they need the 'prophecy' if the kid could justify her own ability to divine the future, etc., etc. I don't see there being enough interest to justify a second film.

Saturday night - Battlestar Galactica - Razor

Honestly, this tv/straight to dvd movie put me to sleep. Apollo is boring when he's in charge. His angst and apathy are uninteresting to the extreme. This story takes place on the Pegasus - which by necessity places the story before the first chunk of season 3. It introduces a character that Admiral Cain had groomed to be some kind of super hardass in her own image. I really fell asleep before the character development kicked in - I probably made it through about an hour of unimaginative showings of all the past events on the Pegasus referred to verbally by characters. Apparently the second half of the movie actually has something interesting about the Cylon efforts to create biological versions of themselves and surviving remnants. I'll check it out some other time when I've got a little more gas left in the tank.

Sunday night - Transformers

To be honest, this is a god awful movie. I saw it in the theater and I wanted that time in my life back. What really made it all better was picking up the Rifftrax commentary. It was done by some of the MST3k guys and it really made the movie a bit more palatable. I'm definitely going to be buying some more of the commentaries for some of the movies that I already own.

Baby's got a media bomb.

Transformers - Could have been much worse. If they had worked on the script as much as the effects you might have had something. Turn your brain off at the door and you'll be better off.

Simpsons Movie - If you like the Simpsons, you like the Simpsons. This is written by a cast of dozens but tied together by the hands down best Simpsons writer - David Silverman(if i'm thinking of the right guy..). It's essentially a long episode. It's got some good laughs, there are very noticeable uses of the Futurama style 3-D rendering, and I ultimately felt like I spent my money well. If you make a drinking game out of taking a drink every time a different/new Springfield resident comes on screen you will die.

A Night at the Museum - Nice movie, good casting, should be top of the list if you've got kids and you're looking for a movie night.

The Unit - Not actually a movie, but I watched the first disc on Saturday. The first episode is what they would be showing on Lifetime if the network was actually for special forces personnel with a dash of desperate housewives on the homefront. It improved immeasurably by episode 4 - not sure if it's just me getting used to the style and characters, but I'll definitely watch another disc of it.

Twinkle Star Sprites - Also not a movie, but actually the deepest 1v1 puzzle shooting game out there. I think we played this for about 2 hours Friday. If you don't have Gametap, check it out.

Nostalgiaiaia

Managed to watch the Reno 911! movie before Blockbuster demanded it back..

I never thought I'd find myself reminiscing about how much better the Police Academy movies were than this. I guess it helped that I was under 12 at the point that I watched most of them.

Favorite scene - when the mousy officer begged Lt. Dangle for some pity sex and he proceeds to chug his half bottle of Jack, proceeding to fail at breaking it on the wall. Also, the stylized next door sex scene that they implied was the same couple until they notice the camera and drive them away.

What I really want is a Viva Variety movie. Now Mr. and (the former)Mrs. Laupin(the same actors as the scene above) are a couple that probably had extremely stylized sex..

Bonus trivia - the actor for Lt. Dangle went to Oak Park and River Forest high School.

Movie Drought

It's been a pretty big drought for moviewatching for me lately. I was stuck with the "do I really want to watch this? maybe next week," trifecta. Inside Man, Moog, and Inconvenient Truth.

I've heard Inside Man was good, but just couldn't work my way up to watching it. So I turned it in for my family to rent Night at the Museum. I was sick in bed so didn't see it.

Moog is a documentary on the guy who made the original synthesizer. It was neat but not something you really sit down with a few beers in front of. Took a while to mail that one back..

Inconvenient Truth I just couldn't bring myself to watch. I was so angry with Michael Moore after Bowling for Columbine with his selective use of facts and creating outright fictions that I couldn't take another *potentially* politically tainted agenda. Traded that one in for Science of Sleep, which is sitting next to the TV now.

I did see Spider-Man 3.. The trailer was a lot cooler than this movie. I'd have to say it's the most comic-booky of the three. No real plot line but all kinds of classic Marvel coincidences, conveniences, and soap opera mentalities. They should have just planned for a Spider-Man 4, given him the black suit this movie in a less Deus Ex kinda way, and had him be a dick until the next movie. Also, some of the characterizations seemed dumb. In House of M Spidey so couldn't deal with being adored by the public that he sabotaged his own dream life and faked his own death to get away from his self destructive streak. It just didn't feel like he would have gone to that Spider-Man parade and put all those people in danger. Did it help that there were zero creative uses of powers? No. Also, CGI has stopped impressing me when it feels like I could be playing a video game at home and have the same feeling. Blah.

I did see the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and it was the best trailer I've seen since the Spider-Man 3 trailer. It's prompted me to at least rent the second movie - it'll be in my mailbox today. I can only hope they don't pull any BS editing like they did with Matrix 2. If I had a wishlist of people I could perform horrible acts of retribution upon, the editor of that movie would have a prominent position. Nobody needs a 10 minute sequence of a hippie rave and Keanu Reeves and another dude having sex.

Also, Idiocracy is on the way and I've got Little Miss Sunshine next to my TV. I don't expect much from Idiocracy, but it feels like one I would normally see.

Movie Madness

I can't even remember how many movies I've seen in the last few weeks..

I'm finishing Poseidon right now, which fits the "ok to rent and watch on my own while Lauren does real work and she'll never want to see." It was surprisingly graphic and seemed a damn sight more watchable than the original. Now I just need them to remake the Towering Inferno.. Good popcorn action and good effects - aside from that unredeemable.

Stranger Than Fiction - Will Ferrell does a good job as the straight man(a good Arthur Dent type character) in a ridiculous situation. Ferrell is the character in a book, but he doesn't realize it until he starts hearing the voice of his narrator. Unfortunately his author only writes novels in which the protagonists suffer horrible deaths. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie until the end, which was probably about as satisfying as the end of the novel Ferrell's character was in - Death & Taxes. Excellent graphical touches in the first half. Also, Maggie Gyllenhal is cute as hell.

I pulled the theater double feature with Blades of Glory and 300.

-Blades of Glory didn't feel quite as hilarious as Talladega Nights, but I also wasn't a pitcher of beer deep when I saw it. Surprisingly less gay innuendo than Talladega. You'd think it'd be the other way 'round. Good fun, not necessary to see in the theater.

- 300 was graphically impressive, but it ended up being kind of boring and you only once got the impression there were actually 300 Spartans. That'll happen when you stretch a 4 issue comic to 2 hours or so. Very nice slo-mo action, though. Best since the lobby scene of the original Matrix.

- Between those two, the most enjoyable thing of the night was the first trailer for Spider-Man 3 I had seen. I think I wet myself with excitement. So impressed with just a few minutes of movie..

School for Scoundrels was just a little bit better than Dodgeball. Translated - It sucked a lot, but there are things that suck more. Jon Heder falls into the Ricky Gervais school of acting - which is to say they don't act, they just get in front of the camera and act like themselves. Once again, the "Lauren really doesn't mind missing this movie" law.

The Descent - Spelunking Horror. Just didn't feel this movie. It was a little like Cube in that I didn't care about any of the characters dying. Picture the filmmakers saying "what if we did Blair Witch meets Gollum except there's a hundred Gollums?" That's pretty much it. It's kind of cool to view it thinking that one of the characters is insane and actually killing off the rest herself because she snapped. Otherwise, I had every reason to have a hard time getting through this in one sitting. In fact, I would pause it pretty often to play Puzzle Quest - that took me up through a 4am night.

The Departed - Nice stuff. It was pretty convoluted and I would probably benefit from watching it a second time. I wouldn't mind watching it again, but it lost my mom and we kept having to pause to get her up to speed. While watching I kept wondering how the hell you could do a sequel and the closest I could come was guessing that they'd combine the Departed series and the Bourne Identity series to get.. wait for it.. Bourne Irish. I was slightly disappointed to find that it's a remake of one movie from an asian trilogy. It remade the middle one, there will be a sequel involving Mark Wahlberg's character, and if that does well enough, they'll go ahead and remake the prequel.

Oh, I also repurchased Anchorman(sold at my last yard sale). There is some absolute genius in that movie, but it feels like it's padded out by too much nonsense. I consider Talladega Nights superior to Anchorman in that the whole movie is much smoother instead of leaving you waiting for the next blast of insanity. Also, the cougar gets me every time.

Current movies on hand - Moog, Inside Man, and Animal House(for teh edification of teh beta unit).

Next five in queue - Rope, Inconvenient Truth, Little Miss Sunshine, Finding Nemo(my students never believed I hadn't seen it), and Idiocracy.

Total movies in queue? 103.

Constant Gardener

Well, it took multiple nights, which is a bad sign for me watching movies on weeknights, but I finished Constant Gardener.

I'd have to say that overall I really liked this movie. It had a very strong Brazil vibe in the well meaning but oblivious and completely inoffensive Sam Lowry character completely falling for a strong minded activist that pokes the wrong giant in the eye. So it was funky seeing these characters pulled from 1984/Orwell type dystopia to African/Big Pharma dystopia..

The cinematography was great - this story was told in an interesting way and managed to use non-linear sequencing well. I really loathe when they can't tell something out of order properly. I'm interested in seeing City of God now, considering how well this director put things together. Perhaps I'll add it to the SuperQueue.

Last of all, I really love movies that don't have happy endings. It's a relief when I can slump down with the characters and empathize with their tiredness. The most recent other example of that was Children of Men - supremely good movie that left my physically exhausted at the end. I can't wait for that DVD to come out this Tuesday.

Overall - Constant Gardener 4/5

Up tonight - Inside Man, Descent(I can't resist the term 'spelunking horror'), and Jack Daniels

I feel like an idiot for not thinking of this.

How it should have ended - Lord of the Rings - would have been a lot shorter if they haven't walked the entire way..

They've written new endings for a ton of movies.

I get the feeling these are the same guys that do movies starring rabbits in 3 minutes.

GameznFlix

Cancelled my GamezNFlix subscription last night. I had one free month and one paid month from the service.

I have to say I was really dissatisfied with the service. It was 4 or 5 bucks cheaper than the other online rental places for 3 movies but it had the theoretical advantage of offering games as well. After having multiple evenings go down the drain from movies dying in the middle due to read errors I just wasn't going to take that crap anymore. Add to that the slow and unhelpful website and the 4 day turnaround time for getting new movies and they're fired. The games aspect of the service ended up as a bit of a wash because I just don't spend that much time playing games anymore. :-/

There's a reason the company's stock trades for $.0008 per share.

Complete the series.

Elf -> 70s News Anchor -> NASCAR Driver -> Figure Skater?

I'm there.

Also, Jenna Fischer and Amy Poehler.