There Is No Defeat In Death, Master Bruce.

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Oh Batman & Robin...the bastard child of the Batman movies. Due to the release of Batman Arkham City the video game, it was decided we should watch this atrocity this week. If you look at it in terms of a 90s movie, it passes as a decent cheesey movie. If you are a fan of Batman at all, you see it as a disgrace to the story and characters. But how could you possibly go wrong with Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Chris O'donnell, Alicia Silverstone, and Uma Thurman? Let me name the ways...

To start, the things I liked:
1. Costuming. Most of the costumes are actually really nicely done. Minus the anatomically correctness of them. I really think we could have done without the nipples. Apart from a few pieces of Ivy's costumes (what is with those green monster gloves with built in nails???), I think the costuming department was pretty spot on.
2. Alfred. Everyone always loves Alfred. I'm glad that Michael Gough returned again to reprise his role. He's such an awesome Alfred.

Things that are so laughable it's disgraceful to the series:
1. Mr. Freeze. Why so cheesey??? I don't understand the idea behind his character being so unreasonably cheesey. Everything that comes out of his mouth makes me want to slam my head into a brick wall. Make him stop talking!
2. The overall feel of the movie. I've gotten used to how directors portray comic book characters and settings in movies. Colorful. Surreal. Slightly cheesey. I feel up until Christopher Nolan, comic book movies have been, in a way, poked fun at. This one in particular ups the anty on the cheese factor. It's like one giant joke. Not the funny kind either.
3. Cartoon Sound Effects. To double up on point 2, during one of the fight scenes, they literally used sound effects that would be found in a cartoon. *smh*
4. Footage Rewind??? Seriously, there is a section where Robin is coming out of the water and gets dragged back in...or that was the idea. He couldn't just go back down? We had to rewind the footage???
5. Bane. One of the most overpowered characters with the highest intelligence, and he was dumbed down to a manservent for Ivy?? He doesn't even get any real lines. In the comics, Bane does the most physical damage to Batman in the whole series. So why is he being portrayed as such a monkey?

I'm a huge Batman fan. I actually don't hate this movie as much as everyone else I know. But in comparison to everything else out there, it's a joke. The more I watch it, the more it aggrivates me. If you are looking for a Batman movie you have so many choices that this should only be an option if your looking for a drinking game. If you want a feel good Batman, go for one of Tim Burton's. If you want a serious and darker look, go for the ones Christopher Nolan has done. But this one is really a waste of time.

Chariots of the Gods, man.

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This week we watched "The Thing". I didn't realize I had tried to watch this one in the past and fell asleep during it. Big suprise...it happened again. But I almost made it through this time! It was like a ten minute mini nap. You can probably already see where this is going to be heading.

Things I Liked:
1.  Jed. < That's the name of the dog actor since the dog was not given a name. Is it bad that my first point is an animal??
2. 80's animatronics. They walk a fine line between super cheesey and pretty amazing. I did enjoy the animatronics in this one, though "the thing" is pretty cheesey.

Things I Didn't Like:
1. Pacing. Soooo sloooowwww. The parts with action are pretty good, but it's so slow for most of the movie. Now here is the problem...it's supposed to be. I'm just not a fan of suspenseful horror. I get bored so easily. "Alien" is the same way and I fell asleep during that as well. Both are classified as cult classics. But they are just not my thing.

Yeah, not much to say about this one. I'm kind of indifferent to it. If you like suspenseful 80's horror and you haven't seen this, it may be worth a watch. Otherwise, it's great for naptime! I love horror, but I need somewhere between 80's suspense and 90s/2000s blood gorefest. Oh the days of Pinhead are so far gone. *whimper*  So overall, not impressed.

Here's to hoping that next week will bring something better.

This isn't a comedy...it's a horror film

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I hate the Scream series. I really do. I seem to have this distaste for American "horror" films. So much senseless blood and gore that is overdone for shock value. There is no "horror" in horror films anymore. Even though the Scream series is combination of horror and satire, I've never been able to get into it. So when I was told we were watching Scream 4, my whinning was just short of a 5 yr old's temper tantrum.

Sidney decides that after pulling herself out of the horrors of what happened in the past, writes a book, and then decides to head back home, where it all started, to talk about her book and fight to overcome in. In classic horror fashion, guess what happens! If you guessed it all goes smoothly, the end, you have obviously never seen a horror film. Ghost face is back, and she again needs to fight for her life.

Things I absolutely hated:
1. Weak females! Why are all the females in these movies absolutely useless?? Seriously. The only woman with half a brain is Neve Campbell's character who has somehow managed to live through all the past movies to get to this point. And even that seems to come in waves. One minute she's kicking some serious ass, the next moment she's pathetic once again.
2. Predicatable scares. I think my inability to tell whether or not Wes Craven was trying to make this movie a serious version of the past movies was making it hard to tell if these scares were supposed to be that way or if he was honestly trying to scare people. I jumped once. And it was a cheap loud noise during a quiet scene scare. What a waste.
3. Terrible Acting. C'mon guys. I know it's a horror film, but can't we find some decent actors? This has a lot of big names in it too and it's still painful.
4. Anna Paquin. She's so hot, but only if she's not talking. She perpetually sounds ignorant since even when she's trying to hide her accent she slips back into it and NO ONE EVER FIXES IT. She's ruined too many movies for me that I cannot forgive her.

Things I didn't absolutely hate:
1. Courtney Cox. Campy, yes. Entertaining, definitely. She plays a bitch so damn well, you have to love her for it.
2. Kristen Bell. I don't want to ruin the scene because it was kind of awesome. I don't care for her normally, on sheer female principle. Little bite-sized blonde that my boyfriend loves. Not a fan. But regardless, she gets props for her scene in this movie.
3. Action. Finally. There is some legitamite action in a Scream movie. And it's well choreographed. Finally, they figured it out! Some moments I even found myself getting into it. I love a good fight scene, and this had a few of them!
4. Culkins. I don't know why, but if you put a Culkin in a movie, I love them, regardless of their ability to act. They looked drugged out of their minds all the time. There is really nothing thats actually good about that family, but it's like my guitly pleasure. *shrugs*

Two things I've learned from this movie:
1. Having a chain lock on your front door serves absolutely no purpose when your house is full of full length windows and glass doors. Why is the front door the only wooden door in the houses in this town? Seriously?
2. Properly lighting your house and streets is not top priority when you have a perpetual state of murders running around. Your neighbors might be able to help you if you kept the lights on, or bought some brighter bubls, since your houses are made of 80% glass anyways. *Ugh* Bad designs..

This was significantly better than the other Scream movies, but in my eyes, that is not enough of a redeeming quality. I was still pretty bored through it and have no intentions of ever watching it again. That town seriously needs to get some outside help because they obviously cannot help themselves. Maybe they can go with the Buffy the vampire slayer tactic and destroy the whole town. Might help...couldn't hurt.

Next week: The Thing...or so I'm being told.

21st Century Cure! Finance Your Kidneys!

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I'm starting to notice a pattern already with the movies we've been watching...Geeky and Deranged. Yeah, those are the words I'm going with. This week we watched Repo! The Genetic Opera. Let's get this out there, I LOVED IT. Even with Paris Hilton playing a minor role...and not dying.

In the year 2056, the human race begins to suffer from organ failure. Not to fear! A savvy, though shady, business man to the rescue! Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino, Goodfellas) has created a business around organ replacement. But if you can't pay for your new fancy pants organs, you wont get to keep them. They also wont be removed as nicely as they were put in. Enter in the Repoman. He hunts down the fugitives and takes back what belongs to Mr. Largo. This is just the very basic idea of this movie. Lots of blood, lots of rock music, not so much Paris Hilton so not so much sex.

Five things that I love:
1) Sarah Brightman. She plays Blind Mag, and if you don't know who she is than you probably never heard the original recordings of Phantom of the Opera and shame on you. This was her first acting gig, but she is a classical opera singer and the hottest 50 year old woman I've ever seen.
2) Rupert Giles...whoops, I mean Anthony Stewart Head. For anyone who has seen Buffy, you may have noticed that sir Giles has one sexy voice for such a geeky man. Seriously, look it up. He sang Behind Blue Eyes, and it was drool worthy...moving on. He's absolutely amazing in this movie.
3) Joan Jett???? Damn straight. A uncredited quick cameo during one song, but it was so exciting for some reason. Like a little easter egg hidden away in this movie.
4) The music. It will get caught in your head even longer than Dr. Horrible.
5) The Graverobber. Nuff said.


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This movie is not for everyone, which is upsetting because I loved it sooooooo much. If you don't like Rocky Horror, then don't bother. If you don't appreciate humor drenched in blood and gore, don't bother. This movie is directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. Sound familar? Try Saw II, III, and IV. One of my friend's, who granted, is the girliest girl I think I've ever met, could not find one redeeming quality in this movie. Which is upsetting. She may be banned from my house for awhile, while I cope. But if your inner goth kid, or outter goth kid, needs something besides Rocky Horror to cling to, this is probably exactly what you need. Seriously have listened to the music nonstop for the past week. I just want to watch it again. And it's another movie from 2008. I must have been sleeping that year. Let's see what other goodies I can find!

Bashing in Minds

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On the table this week in the one great thing, in my opinion, to come from the writer's strike of 2008: Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. A quirky story of a wannabe supervillan and his not-so-secret obsession with a fellow laundry-matt-goer. With a geek studded cast of Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion, directed by Joss Whedon, with help from his brothers Jed and Zack Whedon, this "movie" was set from the start to be any self loathing geek's wetdream. And by the by, I say "movie" because this was originally set as a three part mini series released on the internet.

Fans have a love-hate relationship with Joss Whedon. We (Yes, I am coming out of the closet here and saying I AM A JOSS WHEDON FAN, just keep reading) love him for his bizarre outside of the box writing style, and we hate him because very few things he ever writes end well. By well, I mean with an ending satisfying to the audience. He has a terrible tendancy to kill off the character you love or at least feel deserves it the least. His shows get cancelled before anyone finds out about them so they never get a solid conclussion and if he does have the foresight to conclude them it's one of the most confusing painful experiences you have ever experienced.

With that said, this "movie" is no different. It's like the thrill ride that ended with a screeching halt just before you hit the wall with a glorious explosion. Neil Patrick Harris is comedy gold as anyone who has turned on the t.v. in the past 2 years is sure to have noticed. As the title character, Dr. Horrible, he makes the fight for evil endearing. My personal favorite is Nathan Fillion. That man is sarcasm personified. He plays Dr. Horrible's arch nemisis Captian Hammer and makes being a hero look unbelievablely self centered. It's a brilliant twist. The laundry doing love interest (Penny) is played by Felicia Day who is the newest female love interest of geeks world round, thought I'm still not totally sure why. Perhaps meek red heads just aren't my type?

The music is unreasonably catchy. I've been singing it for days. For a movie made in 6 days, there is little to complain about. But there is always something. Some of the shots get blurry, taking away from the story for a moment while your eyes try to figure out what the hell is going on. And the ending leaves you wanting more, but again, this is a Joss Whedon staple. If it ends right, he probably didn't have much to do with it.

Overall, the movie is a fun time. If you are geeky and in the mood for a few laughs and some catchy songs getting stuck in your head for the next two days, I think you can waste 40 minutes on this movie. What better do we college students have to do? Homework? Pssshhhhh...

Into the Rabbit Hole

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As a college student, I find that I have less and less time to myself the further along I get into my degree. With that said, the less time I have, the less sanity I seem to hold onto. In an attempt to hold onto what I can, my friends and I get together every Friday night for movie night. Generally speaking, we try to find movies no more than two people have seen, and if we are feeling adventurous we may even watch something off online reviews. So I've decided to dedicate this blog to movie reviews of what we watch. Which means the movies I review, or assualt, will be of a very wide range from indy, foreign, to mainstream.

With that said, I'm going to go against that. We watched 13th Warrior this week, but the following day I watched Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. I decided, because of my love of Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and Alice in Wonderland, that this may be a good starting place for my first blog, ever.

Oh, Tim Burton. I grew up as a goth kid, an outcast, etc, and I loved Nightmare Before Christmas to the point of obsession. I loved his quirky art style, his music choices, and as a child, his storytelling. I guess all things get ruined with age. The announcement of Alice in Wonderland made me as giddy as a five year old on Christmas Eve. How could this go wrong? All my favorite things rolled up into one cinematic ball! For lack of a better word, Fail. This was my second time watching the movie. My first, was in theatures at its launch. It ended with me swearing off any further Tim Burton and Johnny Depp combos. I decided to give it a second chance because everyone kept telling me I was being too harsh. So here it goes, my new found opinion.

Overall, the actors do well with what they were given. I, suprisingly, haven't a single complaint about any of the choices for the roles. I love Anne Hathaway as the White Queen and Crispin Glover as the Knave. Perhaps this is because these are two new characters to the Alice Cinimatic cannon. There is nothing to compare them to. Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, played by Matt Lucas, are as quirky as ever. As for everyone else, I give them credit for sucking it up and putting forth full effort to make some sense of the characters and story they were given. To start, the chesire cat, why no riddles?? Isn't that the whole point of the character? I love his design. He is a beautiful looking character, and Stephen Fry does a beautiful job voice acting for him but quirky moments aside, the chesire cat becomes, simply, a plot device. He has no real character, no puzzling riddles, nothing to link this to the chesire cat of the old disney film or original book. The same goes for Dormy. This character upset me from the moment she/he/it steps onto the screen. No longer the narcoletpic little creature of past, now Dormy wants to get out and fight. Making up for lost time, I suppose. I cannot even fault Barbara Windsor, Dormy was given next to no real lines, and a serious lack in personality. Next on my list of what the hell happened is Helena Bonham Carter. I do enjoy her as the Red Queen, but what is with the random Barbara Walters impression? She slips in and out of it throughout the entire movie. I'm not sure why this wasn't addressed at any point during filming. It makes her come off as a sloppy actress, which I don't truly believe her to be. She may not be my favorite actress in the world, but I think she should be better than that. Otherwise she plays crazy well, and the Red Queen is just that. She is one of the few characters who held up in this topsy-turvey world. Finally, the biggest and most obvious disaster: The Mad Hatter. Somewhere along the line he missed a few of his anger management classes and went from the slightly off the rocker but still fun neighbor to the creeper down the road who may just be hiding a shotgun. Johnny Depp, as always, was a champ. He played the character well, but the character was written terribly. There are different degrees of mad. The March Hare, was still the same goofy, crazy, loon as he had always been, but the Hatter went off the deep end. They give a reasonably valid explination for this in the story, but it still feels too far. If the whole movie doesn't go that far, you can't allow only one character to cross that line. It has to be all or nothing.

As for the overall story, the general idea makes sense and fits well. Alice is, again, unable to deal with her real life problems. She runs off into Wonderland, oh I'm sorry, excuse me, Underland? I'll address that in a bit. Once there, she has to save Wonder...Under...whatever you want to call it, once again. Okay, I'll accept that. But Tim Burton starts the movie with her as a child talking about this dream, which the audience is led to believe is her first adventure in Wonderland. The day before her second adventure, she brings up the dream, yet once there she is suddenly unable to remember anything. It's like this is all new to her. Why bring up the dream if you are just going to erase it from her mind? Obviously she didn't really remember anything useful at all. The change in name from Wonderland to Underland adds nothing to the story at all. It simply allows for the Caterpiller, played by Alan Rickman, to continuely to call her "stupid". Hurray for positive reinforment! Tim Burton also takes it upon himself to rename half the characters in the movie with names that are impossible to catch. The last piece of story I'll attack is the need for Tim Burton to bring Wonderland definitely into reality. The great thing about Wonderland is like the movie Inception, was it real or just a dream? Nope, Tim Burton has decided that any injuries sustaned in this mystical place will carry into reality. Injuries that will be hard to explain unless a bear was running rampant in the hedge maze.

My final piece to address is the visuals. If nothing else, Tim Burton is an artistic genius. The settings are stunning, even the more dark and dreary ones. The vibrant colors and classic Burton-style curls are splashed throughout the world and make it a place of magic. Too bad beauty does not make up for lack of substance. Costuming is well done with the exception of the Hatters very Wonka feel. I'll even let slide the bizarre need to make the Red Queen and her court have oddly sized features. I am still on the fence about the Red Queen's castle. As a major fan of the classic computer game American Mcgee's Alice, I feel as though the castle is a little too close to the one in the game, which is from the 90s. But maybe that's just me, it's too hard to find images to confirm my suspicion and playing through the game right now to simply answer that is a bit too time consuming. But regardless, the castle is one of the more stunning pieces in the movie.

So now that this is just short of a flat out rant, I will conclude by saying that I did indeed judge it too hard the first time through. I'm sure you are thinking "What? This is a nicer opinion?", but it is. All of these things are small pieces of a very large puzzle. Music is fitting, costumes beautiful, visuals overall are beautiful, actors are amazing, it's just the story and characters that fall flat to someone who has spent their life engrossed in Wonderland. For a fan of the original story and characters of Alice, this is a hard movie to watch and love. It's not that it's bad, it's just not good in the wider scheme of things. For someone new to Wonderland, this may just be a new take on an old classic. A new Wonderland for a new age. Maybe I've just gotten old. Oh no, that's a terrible thought. I'm going to go deal with my on coming quarter of a century crisis now...