Recently in Movies Category

You may have seen the commercials that have started running this week, the ones that look like public service announcements from a company called MNU and which ends with the tagline "Keeping humans safe by keeping non-humans separate" superimposed over a smiling nuclear family. These commercials remind me of the interstitial commercials that showed up in the RoboCop movies.

They are for an upcoming movie called District 9 which is slated for release on August 14. This film is bring brought to the US by Peter Jackson (the guy responsible for bringing us the Lord of the Rings movies), and is directed by Neill Blomkamp (who is, I believe, from South Africa). District 9 is based on a short film created by Blomkamp, called Alive in Joburg, which is available on YouTube. It looks to be a very thought-provoking flick, which I am assuming (based on what info I can find on the website and in the videos) is about race relations using a sci-fi spin on the races. Whereas Alien Nation was a similar story with the aliens integrated into society, this one seems to be perhaps a treatise on refugees and slavery as the aliens are apparently used as slave labor and not allowed to leave.

All I know is that this film looks really good and I'm looking forward to seeing it, and I also wanted to bring it to your attention. Check out the website as well; it's pretty well done and you can get a better sense of what the point of the film might be after spending some time there. The real gems are the videos, as they tend to explore some of the socioeconomic ramifications of the content within the context of the movie.

We all have them - movies that will always stop and watch whenever we come across them on the dial. Well, I figured it was time for another inane Top 10 list, so here it is - the movies which I will always stop and watch, some of which I am embarrassed to admit that I will watch over and over again. Don't judge me - I know you have some pretty embarrassing stinkers in your pet movie files, too. This isn't exactly a true "top" list, but they're the first ten movies that came to mind.

'Ere we go....

1. Road House
2. The Hunt for Red October
3. 10 Things I Hate About You
4. Top Gun
5. The Matrix
6. Any Indiana Jones movie (except that last one)
7. Live and Let Die
8. Ferris Beuller's Day Off
9. Karate Kid
10. Tommy Boy

Speaking of movies, I was thinking about doing this a while back and am just now getting around to it. I like movies. I like them a lot. I like to watch them, quote from them, dissect them, be snobbish about them, and discuss them ad nauseum. Thus, in the spirit of mildly relevant innanity, here are my top 10 favorite movies in order:

1. The Matrix
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Snatch
4. So I Married An Axe Murderer
5. Aliens
6. Top Gun
7. The Empire Strikes Back
8. Better Off Dead
9. TRON
10. The Hunt For Red October

What's your Top 10 list?

This week was the 10th anniversary of the DVD release of The Matrix. For better or worse, this movie is my favorite movie of all time because it has just the right combination of style, technology, music, and mood to hit me right in the sweet spot. It was well written, well-acted (even with Keanu, go figure), and still is the only movie to even come close to a Gibsonian view of anything remotely resembling "cyberspace" (although TRON is probably the seminal film when it comes to anthropomorphizing computers). It was ahead of its time and forever changed the special-effects industry just like Star Wars by bringing us bullet-time - everything from video games to the NFL now takes advantage of this technology.

I saw the movie 8 times in the theater - in fact, I was in a contest with Candy Barrett (now Muhme) to see who could watch it the most before it left the theaters, and I think I won (she only made it 7 times, if I recall). The first time I saw it was at a late night show on a Wednesday night (midnight, if I recall). I saw it three more times in that week alone, telling and taking everyone that I knew to go see it. I couldn't wait for it to come out on DVD and scoured the Internet looking for bootlegged copies that I could watch until the DVD was released, and I found one ripped by someone who's logo was a "Z" that would occasionally appear on the screen and go down the right side of the frame and then up the left side. I watched the kung-fu and lobby scenes over and over again, and watched it more than I watched my previous favorite movie, Top Gun (hey, I wanted to be a military pilot and that movie was the most real one about fighter pilots that had ever come out to that point). I was really into the whole thing, including The Animatrix and the video game that came out.

So, tonight I decided to bust it out the original flick and watch it again in honor of it being 10 years old this week. And you know what? I still love it. It's a classic, and it's still my favorite movie. Note that we're not even acknowledging that the other two exist, btw - the second one would have been good if the third one had been good but since the third one totally tanked, that took the second one down with it and nullified any of the work that was contained therein.

Another interesting tidbit is that the movie content is oddly appropriate for a Good Friday viewing, seeing as it's quite a biblical parallel, albeit a much more stylized and modern take on it with Neo being the messiah figure complete with death and resurrection which saved all mankind.

Spawned by an IM conversation with Kyle, here are five movies that I wish I had never, ever seen (this isn't about being a bad movie, but rather goes more to content which made me feel bad inside for watching):

1. Event Horizon
2. 8MM
3. Pulp Fiction
4. Very Bad Things
5. The Exorcist

Pretty much anything by Quentin Tarrantino would also fit in this list.

Let it not be said that I only post about music here on the 'Drain...no, no...I'm your multimedia pusher, baby. I came across these vids through various sources and wanted to pass them along to you for those times when you get bored and need to take a brain break.

• The Guild is a really amusing series of short webisodes that chronicles the awkward life of a gamer grrrrrl that has a bit of a gaming addiction. Compulsive 9-hour gaming sessions, irl meetings, guild shenanigans, social awkwardness, the "you're not anything like I pictured you" stage, and all sorts of other things will be all-too-familiar for some of us. And you may recognize the main character, Felicia Day, from various TV commercials (my favorite being the ultra-creepy Cheetos commercial where Chester Cheetah encourages her to throw her Cheetos in with the whites of some other patron). Good stuff.
• TR2N - read it as "Tron 2" (I know, the stupidest title in the world) - has been leaked and shows some footage of the new lightcycles and some of the action. It seems that Mr. Jeff Bridges will also be making his return to the update of the computer-generated world that launched his career in the hearts of many a geek (second only to "the Dude" from The Big Lebowski). Check out the footage - it looks way cool and I'm really looking forward to seeing how they update things. Here's to hoping they don't eviscerate my childhood like Michael Bay did with that awful Transformers movie.

Watch, love, comment.

Sweet mother of mercy, that's a good movie! If you can see it in IMAX, so much the better. I was totally blown away by this movie - hands down, bar none, the best movie of the summer. I'm sure that the IMAX experience was adding quite a bit to this film, but while the film was definitely long (maybe just a tad too long with several places along the way where it could have ended just fine), I didn't find myself getting bored or restless because the story was executed that well.

I really liked Tim Burton's original take on Batman with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. The ambiguously retro time frame, the garish clothing, and the just-this-side-of-insane antics of Nicholson's Joker did the franchise justice and mixed the campy and pyschotic versions of the Joker into one neat character. Heath Ledger's take, on the other hand....wow, now that was creepy. Definitely more homicidally psychotic and much darker than the Burton version, Frank Miller's gritty characterization was all over this version. This Joker isn't doing things for vengeance, he's doing it purely for the element of chaos - a person with absolutely no rules and constraints and hence, no remorse. That is the scariest thing of all, my friends. Some of my viewing party wondered if immersing oneself in this kind of role would be enough to have contributed to Ledger's untimely death; one never knows, but it wouldn't be surprising.

Other than that stellar performance, this movie is just well done all around. Visually stunning, well acted, star-packed, and just really, really fun to watch. Having the swooping cityscapes and chase scenes filling my entire field of vision was really an immersive experience and felt more real than anything short of the U2 3D IMAX show. As ironic as it sounds when talking about a superhero movie, this one had just enough of a hint of real-world realism and timeline to make suspending the disbelief over stunts and gadgets an easy thing to do. Speaking of stunts, Christian Bale did as many of his own stunts as he was allowed to do, and the production team tried to do as many of the "trick shots" as possible with real actors and situations instead of CG, which I think really contributed more to the air of realism and grit in this movie. I think from this point forward, Chris Nolan and his team should be the only ones allowed to direct Batman movies. He just gets it. Definitely the best film I've seen yet this year or expect to see (even though I have high hopes for Deathrace coming up next month).

I think this film did a great job of exploring the darker aspects of the Batman story - the idea that unpredictable evil is brought about by the very presence of an overwhelmingly good force, and that one must exist alongside the other. It also explored the relationship between heroism and vigilantism, and where that line between do-gooder and criminal lies...is someone who breaks the law for the greater good worthy to be respected and allowed to continue, or is he just as bad as those who would break the law for personal gain or, in the case of the Joker, for the pure element of unpredictable chaos? When does someone cease doing things for good and become that which he fights?

The only really sad part of the film was when the Lamborghini Gallardo got smashed. Such a tragic thing to do to such a beautiful car.

I'm going to see The Dark Knight in IMAX tonight. I'm totally stoked.

I got free preview tix to see Hellboy 2 tonight (thanks, Falcor!) so I gave my friend Scott (who recently had knee surgery and therefore wouldn't be playing volleyball) a call and we headed down to the cineplex to see if it was going to do the first film any justice. I'd say that it did in spades - while I think that they had a little bit too much romance in the film (not just Red and Liz but also Abe and the elfin chick which was a little much), it was pretty good and there was a lot more Guillermo Del Toro creature feature action in this flick. Lots and lots of rich imagery a la Pan's Labyrinth as well, which was visually stunning in my book.

Ron Pearlman does another great performance as Hellboy and I don't really think they could have cast this role any better - hard to believe Ron made his bones as the poetry-spouting lionman in that terrible tv show Beauty and the Beast. I'm so glad that Del Toro recognized his true genius and ability to play Hellboy to a T...really fun to watch. It was slightly disappointing to find that David Hyde Pierce was not voicing Abe Sapien this time around, but Doug Jones did a very good job of mimicking DHP's short and snippy vocal delivery, although the Abe character did get watered down a bit in this film - he seemed too sappy and bookish compared to the role he had in the first film.

Overall, though, it was a really good story and served to continue the Hellboy movie mythos well. I think that I actually liked the first film a little better between the two, but I would definitely watch Hellboy 2 again and have no problems accepting it into the "canon". You should go see it if you enjoyed the first one, but the first one is not required viewing. There are more monsters in this one than in the last one, though, and Del Toro's creatures tend to be a little....disconcerting... if you're not ready for them, so be prepared. I suppose if you want to wean your kids off of the idea of the tooth fairy, you should let them watch the first bit of this film....they'll never want anything called a tooth fairy to come to their room at night again after seeing it. ;)

So, two thumbs up from me. The only reason that this didn't get a full 5 from me was just due to some of the sappy and unecessary dialogue and the lack of a few more quips in the Hellboy style from Red.

Went and saw Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull tonight. You'll see the review of 3.5 stars out of 5. The short review is:

- Too many one-liners.
- Harrison Ford's still got it.
- Not enough hidden temples and death-defying situations.
- Good car chase.
- Shia LeBouf is the next Keanu Reeves.

Follow the jump for a more in-depth review.