Archive for August, 2007

Pathfinder

Published
by
Chalupa
on August 23, 2007
in Action, Adventure, Drama, History, Thriller and War
. 0 Comments

When I saw the trailers for this I thought it looked awesome. Main character is a Viking, played by Karl Urban, who was left for dead, raised by Native Americans and later fights off more Vikings who come back for more destruction. You’ll probably recognize Karl Urban from a number of films he’s been in like Lord of the Rings or Bourne Supremecy. If you’re truly a movie watcher you might even remember him from Ghost Ship. The guy’s been around. He hasn’t really had a starring role yet, to my knowledge, so this was definitely a step up the career ladder for him.

In the same way horror movies resort to gore and/or sex to keep people interested, this movie just resulted to gore to keep the audience entertained. It wasn’t very realistic gore, but it was still gore nonetheless. Besides crazy things like a man’s eye being cut out and falling to the ground like a bouncy ball, there were also many other aspects of the movie that just didn’t make sense. It made me think of when Chris Rock hosted the Oscars and announced if you’re going to do an action movie you need to hold out for Russell Crowe and not settle for Colin Farrell.

The Indians (Native Americans) seemed so naive and totally unaware. They weren’t the only people living in that area and I seem to remember from history that not all native tribes and people groups were exactly friendly so people knew how to take care of themselves. Also the Vikings were just a bit too over-the-top for me. You couldn’t tell who was playing who, they had somewhat superhuman strength and were basically organic helicopter gunships minus the flying ability. Were Vikings that violent? What really is the purpose of decimating a region? If you destroy everything there’s not much plunder to take home. I also found it interesting that people were wearing the equivalent of bathing suits in the mountains during winter without being affected by the temperatures.

Ok, ok. I’ll get off my high-horse of history, continuity and logic…but what about the cinematography? This was definitely shot as an action film but it didn’t have the finesse and grace of a car chase from Ronin or a crazy, out of control fight scene from the Bourne trilogy. The lighting was bad and it was hard to tell what you were looking at half the time.

I know, I know, I’m exhibiting High Fidelity elite-ism. I’m ok with that. Maybe you loved this movie. That’s ok. Different strokes for different folks as they say. I just know I don’t want to see this again.

Superbad

Published
by
Chalupa
on August 20, 2007
in Comedy, Coming of age, High School, Romance and Teen Movie
. 2 Comments

I finally saw the long awaited and hoped-for Superbad and have to say that I was in no way dissapointed. I think this is by far, the dirtiest teen-genre movie I’ve seen and it wasn’t full of naked co-eds going at it like rabbits. In fact, the only nudity is at the very beginning of a movie when we see a magazine cover. One side note is that when Liz and I saw this, a guy walked in with his 3 or so very young children. We were pretty worried about them being in there, but he got up and ushered his youngtsers out before they were even out of the convenient store (couple minutes in). That made us quite relieved. He must not have realized what the movie was.

As I’ve said before, Judd Apatow is amazing. He didn’t direct this, but he did produce the film along with co-writer and star Seth Rogen and co-writer Evan Goldberg. Like most “cool” Hollywood people, Apatow and Rogen brought in tons of their friends from previous shows and movies. That’s one thing I’ve really enjoyed about Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up - I get to see all my favorite actors and actresses again. One of my favorites was seeing Steve Bannos as the math teacher. He was also the math teacher in Freaks and Geeks. Then there are also the new people brought in like Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Michael Cera, an upcoming comic genius to be reckoned with.

Story - this is probably the best high school portrayal I’ve seen in a long time. This is even better than Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Dazed and Confused. Elephant is another amazing high-school movie, but it’s in a totally different league. One thing I love so much about things Rogen and Apatow are involved in is just the dialog. It’s so real. Yeah it can be rough around the edges and a little “dirty” at times, but it’s how I remember high school. Just the way people act, think and look is so amazingly perfect. I’m continually wowed.

The basic gist of the story is you have three fairly average senior high school students. One of them has just acquired a fake ID with the name ‘McLovin’ and the three friends have promised to buy booze for a popular girl’s party. This sounds pretty average. In fact it sounds way too average. What happens in between the promise and fulfilling it is what makes this a masterpiece. Store robberies, mistaken identities, crazy adult-parties, bar fights and a pair of buddy-cops that could give Hot Fuzz a run for its money and turn this into one of the best movies of the summer.

I know I can’t recommend this to a lot of people just because of the content. They’ll turn it off or walk out just like that responsible father did within the first few minutes or scenes. Even though this movie is pretty dirty, it’s still going in my top three movies of the year. The hard part will be decided which I like the best.

Venus

Published
by
Chalupa
on August 16, 2007
in Comedy, Drama, Film in film, Play in film and Romance
. 0 Comments

I wanted to see this movie based on the trailers I saw. I didn’t quite know the plot until I started watching it. I was a little surprised, but not really at all. It’s basically an old man falls in love with a much younger girl/woman. I don’t remember her age being revealed, but she couldn’t have been much more than 20. Even though I felt like this was a very good movie by the end, I was still creeped out just a little bit. I also don’t feel like I could recommend this to many people at all based on just content.

This was almost a reverse Léon in a way. You know, the international version of The Professional starring Jean Reno, Natalie Portman and Gary Oldman. If you haven’t seen the longer, uncut version I can sum it up for you. There are some extra and extended scenes re-enforcing the fact that Mathilda is in love with Leon. I say Venus is a reverse because in this case it’s the old man loving the young girl. For some reason this seems like a worse case, but both parties were in that consenting stage of life.

“Venus”, or Jessie is played by Jodie Whittaker and Maurice (the old man) is played by none other than the great and amazing Peter O’Toole. I’m not even going to start on a list of his accomplishments because it would be too immense. To give you an idea of their real age difference, Peter O’Toole just turned 75 two weeks ago and Jodie Whittaker is/will be 25 this year. Jessie was in a way starved for attention and had a warped sense of what love really is. Maurice was an old man enamored with a young girl he couldn’t have and crossed the line more than once. But, and this is a very big but, Jessie kept encouraging him. The more and more time they spent together, the more she would allow him, and even invite him, to do things.

Now right now you might be saying, “What the hell?” It’s not as bad as it sounds. Seriously. I’m talking about things like touching her hand, kissing her shoulder; it wasn’t that bad. It was still creepy and weird though. The language in this movie is a bit coarse. I kept going back and forth between potty-mouthed-old-men and this-takes-place-in-London and they-talk-that-way. I’m not really sure where I ended up, however, the choice in language didn’t seem out of place or there for shock value. It truly fit.

The movie ended well. I’m not going to give away the ending. If I wasn’t sure I liked it halfway through, I definitely liked it by the end. Like I said before, I’m not going to recommend this to hardly anyone, but I’m still a fan.

Bourne Ultimatum

Published
by
Chalupa
on August 16, 2007
in Action, Adventure, Assassination, Based on a book, Conspiracy, Mystery, Sequel, Thriller, Trilogy and Twist
. 0 Comments

If you were a fan of the first or second movies, Bourne Identity or Bourne Supremacy, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll love the third installment. This isn’t another one of those tragic trilogies that took a good thing and drove it into the ground…Matrix, cough, cough. They kept it coming and kept improving things throughout the series.

There’s some faces you’ll recognize and there’s also some new ones. You already know Jason (Matt Damon), Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) and Pamela Landy (Joan Allen). Some new faces you might recognize are David Strathairn, Paddy Considine, Albert Finney and Scott Glenn. I was really excited to see Paddy Considine in here. I hope this boosts his career a bit. I thought he was amazing in In America, enjoyed him in Cinderella Man and loved him in Hot Fuzz. Everything kind of comes full circle this time around. You find out how things started, who is responsible for everything and as always, nobody can quite catch Jason Bourne.

Once again the government goes after Bourne to cover their tracks, and end up creating even more of a mess that needs to be covered. This time there’s no playing around though. If you know what the word “ultimatum” means, the movie definitely lives up to it.

I don’t really have much else to say about this. I loved it. Go out and see it. Tell us your thoughts.