Reviews

Casanova, 2005 6/10, 26th best movie of 2005, 193rd of the 2000's, 587th overall

I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. I think one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much was because I watched it after having the previously day watched United 93 and The New World. Unlike those two movies, Casanova is a movie that realizes its a movie. It works to establish plots and characters, and motivations, and settings, and you know... the things that make up a movie. Many movies fail when they try to do too much. This one does a good amount, just what it needs to do, no more, no less. This movie had some fairly interesting scenes, was occasionally pretty funny, and basically enjoyable. If I had to some up this movie in a single word I would have to use the word "charming". I'd recommend it, but try not to get your hopes too high.

The New World, 2005 3/10, Second worst movie of 2005, 1028th overall

I didn't like this movie. Let's start with this fact. I have a history degree from a fully acredited university. I know quite a bit about the history of the United States. I know several names and important dates in regaurds to John Smith, the pilgrims, and the founding of British colonies in the United States, and I still rarely had any idea what the hell was going on most of the time. For one thing, they never use names for any of the characters. Also, the characters have realistically thick accents, which is good for reasons of authenticity, but I could understand nearlly half of the dialouge. Also it was over 2 and a half hours long and extremely boring. This is all very unfortunate because it was one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. Unfortunately all the beautiful scenery in the world can't make this movie better than a three out of ten.

United 93, 2006 6/10, 4th out of 6 movies for 2006, 150th of the 2000's, 450th ranked movie of all time

This film was very powerful, very moving, very emotional and very well made... but it wasn't really a movie. It is (to my knowledge) a very direct portrayal of the events of September 11th. Much of the first hour of the movie takes place not on the plane, but in air-traffic control rooms on the east coast, as they figure out that these attacks are taking place. The second half of this movie was very powerful. I was very moved watching the people on the plane as they knew that they were likely to die soon, as I think most people who remember September 11th would be. That being said, the first half of the movie was pretty darn boring. I think that the thing is, this isn't really a movie. There aren't really characters, or a plot, or dialouge. Their more just trying to show something that happened in the most direct way possible. That being said I'd still recommend seeing it once in your life.

The Benchwarmers, 2006 6/10 5th out of 6 movies for 2006, 196th in the 2000's, 590th ranked movie of all time

I probably shouldn't have liked this movie... I did anyway. John Heder is hilarious. David Spade is funnier than you might expect, and Rob Schnider is in it too. The plot is ridiculous, the acting is sub par, but who cares... it's funny. Is this movie gonna change your life? No. Is it a decent way to kill an hour and half, yes. It's not anything special, but it's pretty alright. It's got a few laughs in it, and what more can you expect from a dumb summer comedy anyway? Just look at the movies stars... if you liked the other movies they've been in. you'll probably like this one too.

Hurcules in New York, 1970 2/10, Worst movie of 1970, Second worst of the 1970's, 1214th overall

I didn't actually see this movie recently. However I did see it back in Jr. High. Recently while looking at IMDb.com's "100 worst movies of all time" I saw it and realized I hadn't ranked it yet. Let me assure you it is on that list for a reason. It is not a good movie, or even an adequate movie. Here are the only reasons I can recall that would make it worth watching. Aarnold Swarzenager stars in it, but they dub his voice to make him sound American, which is especially awesome since he's Hurcules who would have been Greek. Also this movie had a gorilla in it who was VERY VERY clearly just a man in a gorilla suit... that was fairly awesome. Anyway, those are pretty much the high points of the movie. I gave this movie a two because it never made me want to kill my self... but its still very, very bad.

The Omega Man, 1971 6/10, 6th Best Movie of 1971, 41st best of the 70s, 574th all time The Omega Man is LOOSELY based on the novel "I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson, one of my favorite books of all time. That "LOOSELY" should be stressed as much as is humanely possible. It is almost completely dissimilar from the book. Normally that would mean a death sentence for my enjoyment of the movie, but this time that's not the case. This movie survives as watchable because it goes so far from its source material. If the movie would have chosen to change only 7 or 8 key aspects of the book I likely would have found myself yelling at my television. However, this movie changed enough things that I was able to resign myself to the movie being completely separate from the book within 18 seconds of the movies beginning. Thus by looking at the movie independently from the book I was able to say that it really wasn't half bad. It was over-the-top and cheesy at times, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. It was a fairly cool vision of the apocalypse, and I enjoy watching Chuck Heston playing the ultimate bad-ass scientist. If they would have taken a direct interpretation of the book I might be ranking this movie as a 10/10 or a 1/10, as it is they changed it up, played it weird, and got a 6. Good enough eh?

Deep Blue, 2003 5/10, 42nd best of 2003, 224th best of the 2000's, 677th all time Not to be confused with the ass-awful Deep Blue Sea, about super-intelligent man-eating sharks. Deep Blue is a Discovery Channel Documentary about life in the oceans of the world, narrated by Pierce Brosnen. This movie had some really cool scenes: Polar Bears attacking Baluga Whales, Killer Whales attacking Humpback Whales, Dolphins pushing schooling fish into a feeding ball, etc. I like watching these things, the only problem is I had seen them all before on the discovery channel... for free. The unfortunate problem with this movie is that it had litterely nothing that I hadn't seen at some time on the discover channel, or the national geographic channel, or animal planet, etc. Thus it was very hard to stay interested in it for over two hours. However, if you like this kind of stuff at all, and haven't seen it all already, than I would say its definitely worth a watch.

Hostel, 2006 5/10, 4th best of 2006 (out of 4 total movies) 241st of 2000's, 708th all time I'm gonna be honest with you, I really don't know why so many people say this movie is so great. Granted, the movie is based on an interesting concept. Some Americans in Europe end up at a place where people pay others to torture and murder people. Fairly clever right? But the movie just isn't that interesting to watch. While I love horror movies, the reason I love watching them is that I can choose witch characters I'm rooting for. Deciding who I would want to live or die. While watching this movie I really never for a moment cared which characters (good and bad) lived or died. The movie did nothing to draw me in. I never felt like I was watching real people, just a very violent occasionally silly movie. Granted if I was 12 or 13 years old I might have enjoyed the movie simply for the fact that their were boobs in it, but by now those days are behind me. It's not that this movie is bad, its just that I can't see a single thing that makes it stand out from other horror movies. I guess I just don't get what all the fuss was about.

Run Ronnie Run, 2002 6/10, 28th best movie of 2002, 162nd best of the 2000's, 429th all time Mr. Show with Bob and Dave is one of my favorite shows. Run Ronnie Run was created by the makers of Mr. Show with Bob and Dave and actually based on one of the first scetches ever seen on that show. However, Run Ronnie Run is not one of my favorite movies of all time. What I saw here was exactlly what I saw when I watched Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy. What works extremely well as a 30 minute scetch comedy show doesn't work nearly as well as a 90 minute film. That's not to say the movie isn't enjoyable. There's some good laughs, and its really a fairly interesting plot. I liked the movie well enough, but overall I was expecting much better.

Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, 1988 6/10, 13th best movie of 1988, 93rd best of the 80's, 613th best overall This was actually a pretty decent movie. Apparently back in the 30s there was a huge problem in Austrailia with some bugs that ate sugar cane. They brought in cane toads from Hawiaii to eat them. The cane toads didn't eat those bugs, but they did eat everything else. And they soon spread over much of eastern Austrailia. Anyway the movie discusses how the movie effects the nation of Australia and the people that inhabit it. It introduces many interesting characters and lets them share their stories of how the cane toads have effected their lives. Now let me be honest with you for a second. If I had sat down and watched a two hour movie about cane toads, I probably would have gotten very bored, and in turn given this movie a bad review. However, this movie is not 2 hours long, it's actually only about 45 minutes long. Just enough time to get you interested, keep you interested, and than end. Was I doing back flips in my chair because I was having so much fun watching this movie? No, but it was still interesting, informative, and overall, a pretty good movie.

I finally saw That Penguin Movie About Penguins . So my mom wanted to see a movie with me and there wasn't much playing. So we agreed to go see that Penguin movie. I mainly agreed to because it was narrated by Morgan Freeman and cause well... my mom was paying. It wasn't so much that the movie was bad... cause it wasn't, it's just that... it was about Penguins... the whole thing. 90 minutes is an awful lot of Penguin. That being said for a Penguin movie it was really well made. Also I'm afraid I must admit that baby penguins are unreasonabally cute. They're like puppy-dogs in little tuxes. So if you have nothing to do for about 85 minutes and someone else is willing to pay, I'd say hell yeah, go see the Penguins.

Boogie Nights, 8/10, 6th best movie of 1997, 158th best movie of all time.

I suppose most of the people that are going to see this movie have seen it already, but I'll review it anyway. This movie manages to be simultaneously brilliant and very fun. I'm sure its under drama at the video stores but you could just as easily put it under comedy (especailly John C. Reily's character). Although it is extremely sad to see Mark Whalbergs character go from an extremely nice if somewhat stupid young man into a total asshole jerk, but at the same time I'm sure that transition is what made the movie so fun to watch, and I suppose that is the most likely thing to happen in this situation. Well I realize this movie came out nearly a decade ago, but you know what that means... you can rent it for about dollar.... go get it!

Munich, 8/10, 3rd best of 2005, 132nd best movie of all time.

This movie fell only three spots short of a 9/10. I really liked this movie, probably one of the fairest war movies I've ever seen. There have been movies before that refuse to take sides. But in those movies it mostly seems that they try to make the message, "everyone is evil, there are no good guys, everyone just wants to kill everybody." This movie is more on the side of saying that everyone is pretty okay. All these people involved in terrorism or anti-terrorist espeonaige or killing or war... they aren't fighting cause they want to kill people, they all have something to fight for, something that's extremely important to them. This movie doesn't really attempt to answer any of the important questions in the mid-east crises, but that's not its job. Wonderful movie, good characters, and most importantly.... I never got bored.

Grizzly Man, 7/10, 16th best movie of 2005, 424th best movie of all time.

Not ranked particularly high I know, but still one of the higher documentaries on my list. I guess I thought this movie was more intriguing than good. The movie tackels fairly deep issues about man's role in the world and his place in nature. I really appreciated that the director Herzog chose as his subject a man (Timothy Tredwell) who he strongly disagreed with on many of the issues this film tackeled. I also got the feeling Herzog didn't evan particularly like Timothey (I know I couldn't have standing talking to him for more than 3-5 minutes if I had met him). I personally disagreed wholeheartedly with Tredwell and Herzog but liked the movie anyway. Even if your not it for the philosophical junk the shots of the Alaskan wilderness are beautiful and Bears are just plain fun. It's no Murderball but its good... go see it!

Unleashed (AKA Danny the Dog), 2005

This movie contains a shocking surprise, and while I hate to give away spoilers I have to tell you the amazing surprise of this movie: Jett Lee actually isn't a terrible actor! So I saw Unleashed a few days ago and Jet Lee actually seemed to act pretty well. It was more or less what you would expect from a Jet Lee movie. Lot of cool fight scene, plot kind of cool in a cheesy way, but what surprised me is that a lot of the scenes where Jet Lee wasn't fighting anyone were pretty good. The one thing that wasn't explained was why he had an aisan accent when the plot explained that he was raised in Great Britain, but whatever.

6/10, 18th best of 2005, 168th of the 2000s, 531st overall

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, 1997 A documentary that aims high and doesn't quite make it. It's about four guys that have achieved great things in very unussual fields. The director was trying to make a point about what it takes to be a success. He tried to make the argument that although the mens fields were very different (robot designer, mole rat expert, lion tamer, gardener) they succeeded for the same reason. He did this by first introducing the men, than interviewing them, than having the answers of one play while he showed the other working. It was a pretty well made movie and shot pretty well, but it just didn't quite do it for me. It was a well made movie and I enjoyed it, but I feel that it could have done a lot more.

6/10, 23rd best of 1997, 250th of the 90s, 627th overall.

The Basketball Diaries, 1995 Decent performance by Leo De Caprio in the starring roll but still not a very good movie. I could point out several things I didn't like about the movie but I'll simply stick to my biggest problem. This was a character driven movie, and I couldn't help but not give a damn about any of the characters involved. That really hurt my abilaty to enjoy the movie. On the plus side it was shot pretty well and wasn't boring, plus it introduced me to the song "people who have died" by The Jim Caroll Band, which I'm totally loving right now .

---5/10, 36th best movie of 1995, 321st of the 90's 815th overall

Short Time, 5/10, 23rd best movie of 1990, 332nd of the 1990s, 842nd all time I had actually really wanted to see this movie for a long time. I had seen a preview for it when I watched some movie in high school and thought it was a good idea for a movie. I was actually going to order it on netflix but nobody ever bothered to put it on DVD. But while I was looking for something to watch at my girlfriends the other day I saw it was on show time. It's about a Cop who finds out he has a terminal desiease. He is uneffected now, but will be dead in 3 months. He can collect insurance in the amount of 250,000 dollars for his family, but the thing is, he has to die on the job. Thus he starts taking ridiculous chances on the job, but keeps accidentally succeding, and getting all these commendations for bravery when all he wants to do is get killed. Now I thought this sounded like a very funny idea for a movie. And while I still feel the premise was very good, the movie isn't really done very well. There is one ridiculously funny 10 minute car chase scene which I feel shows exactly how good this movie could have been, and single-handedly bumped this movie up from a low four to a low five. But other than that I think this movie is mostly a lot of lost potential.

Magnolia, 7/10, 26th best of 1999, 127th in the 1990s, 364th all time

The primary obstacle for this movie to overcome was the fact that it was over three hours long. That's a very long time to spend watching a movie, especially one with no explosions (I'm kidding {sor of}). But anyway the movie is actually very good. Great characters played by great actors. Interesting interweving stories.

(I'm going to talk about something that might not make sense if you've never seen the movie, but won't really give anything important away, read if you care to) Form what I read a lot of people hated the bit with the frogs, but I really liked it. The plot of the movie, and especially the movies music, really created the feeling that it was building towards something big for about an hour and a half leading up to the frog scene. And you feel like there has to be all these separate climaxes where one thing happens to this person, and something else happens to another person, and all these separate amazing climaxes that some how bring everything together. But that didn't have to happen because of the frogs. These people were connected by the fact that they were all in these intense situations that were strangely and seemingly always positively affected by the fact that it somehow started raining frogs. Maybe I'm off the mark but I took it to mean that God had somehow found a way to help all these struggling people with one seemingly random and bizarre act.

Thus, this is one of those movies that is left in a precarious position. I thought there was a ton of great stuff here and I liked it a lot. But for a good chunk of the movie I was pretty bored and kind of wanted it to be over. Thus it ends up with a seven. The sad thing is, there was so much going on that I kind of want to see it again, but don't really want to sit through it again. Really quite the sticky wicket.

The Notebook, 5/10, 59th best of 2004, 258th in the 2000s, 783rd all time This movie started at a clear disadvantage because it is in the "chick flick" genre of which I am not a massivly big fan. It was further hurt by the fact that I was forced into watching it by my girlfirend, and at that I was forced to watch it late at night when I wanted to go to bed. Also, she fell asleep 10 minutes in to the movie, but I already felt I had to watch the entire thing. That being said, the movie was not entirely unpleasant. I can't really pick out anything that I loved about the movie (although I did feel James Garner gave a very good performance), I didn't necisarily find anything wrong with the movie either. It's relatively bland, predictable, unoffensive, and vaugly pleasant. In my mind this movie isn't good or bad, its just sort of there.

Dog Town and Z-Boys, 6/10, 23rd best of 2001 164th in the 2000's, 525th all time I've been enjoying a high number of documentaries lately, and this one certainly has plenty to enjoy. It's shot beautifully, flows very nicely, and at least for me the subject mater was pretty interesting. I think this movie might have been ranked more highly had I not already seen Lords of Dogtown, which tells pretty much the same story in a non-documentary foremat. I enjoyed Lords of Dogtown quite a bit more purely based on the fact that its just more fun to watch. If documentaries are your thing I'd say go with this, otherwise just stick with Lords of Dogtown. Unless your a big skating fan, or like me you've got time on your hands, than you might as well watch them both.

The Hills Have Eyes, 2006 Horay! My first movie of 2006! And guess what? It's actually very good. Always nice to start a year of on a good note. This movie has a very good plot, a creepy setting, and a lot of good ideas for a horror movie. The villains are actually very scary, which you can't say of most horror movies any more. You end up feeling horrible for their victims, even though you don't particularly like most of those victims. It also contained what is likely one of my top 20 one on one fights from any movie ever. It may even be able to sneak in to the top 10, I'd have to make the list to be sure. That being said, the acting wasn't great, and it was a little slow at the beginning. However, I really did like this movie quite a bit, and it managed to do something that a scary movie hasn't done in quite a while... it scared me.

7/10, 1st out of 1 movie for 2006, 115th for the 2000s, 398th of all time

Carnival of Souls, 1962 First off I want to say that I owe this movie a lot. This movie along with "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Last Man on Earth" helped to create what would later be known as the Zombie genre of horror movies. Thus I thought it would be good to see this movie. The problem, which I freely admit is not this movies fault, is that because it was creating the zombie genre, it didn't really have to try to do anything big. It just showed us some zombie-like creatures, put them in a vaugly creepy setting, and figured that would be enough. And if this was the first zombie movie I had ever seen, it probably would have been. The problem is, everything in this movie, I have seen in at least 3-4 other movies. Now, while perhaps that isn't fair since this movie was made before them, it still made the movie impossible to enjoy. Also, the acting was just plain terrible.

3/10, 4th out of 4 movies for 1962, 32nd* of the 1960s, 1088th of all time. *just so you know that's 32 out of 32 movies for the 1960s, I know, I really need to see some more old movies.

Capturing the Friedmans, 2003 Very good documentary studying something as simple and complex as an average American family. Of chorse this particular American family has 2 men accused of raping dozens of boys over a period of several years. This movie does a great job of jerking you back and forth. At first you'll be positive they're guilty, than positive they're innocent, than positive that the dad is guilty but the son is innocent, than you'll think they're both guilty but the charges are exaggerated. And in the end you have no more of an idea of the truth than you did when you started. This is a very interesting way to do a documentary, but it leaves you feeling stragely unsatisfied. Documentaries usually have an assertion about something, and try to prove that assurtion. I don't think the film makers have any more of an idea about the truth in this case than I do. And while I hate to say that I like to be told what to think, when I'm watching a documentary, I kind of like to be told what to think... and than decide later if I want to think that way or not. This was just barrels full of contradicting information from many different sources. Thus the movie was innovative, fascinating, but slightly less enjoyable than it could have been. 6/10, 32nd out of 71 movies for 2003, 461st overall

Capote, 2005 Yes, Phillup Seymour Hoffman deserved the Oscar for this movie. This was a very well made movie, the best feature of which was the acting which was great all around, and inspired by Hoffman. The reason that it didn't do better was that in parts it was a little slow. The movie is a great character study looking at the morals and motives of booth Truman Capote himself, and the killer he is interviewing. However, there's just some scenes in this movie that I don't really feel need to be there. When I got to the movie I kind of was glad it was very because I was beginning to get bored, I can say that about good movies, but not great ones.

7/10, 18th out of 42 movies for 2005, 140th best of 2000s, 432nd best all time