The Top 10 Nerd Movies of all Time
Sort of. You see, when someone says top 10 nerd movies of all times, it always devolves directly into the Lord of the Rings, Batman Returns, and Empire Strikes Back. However, those types of lists are so pedestrian and have been done to death. Instead, I want to do the top 10 movies with nerds in them. Specifically, nerds who act as I have known nerds in real life and who end up kicking ass.
The thing is I am going to try to avoid movies that paint nerds as charactertures of nerds. When I first suggested this topic last night a friend of mine said “Oh, you mean like Revenge of the Nerds.” No. Movies like that (or Napoleon Dynamite) are designed to make fun of nerds and their nerdishness, while instilling a bit of feel good when the geeky underdog wins in the end over the moronic jocks. I actually don’t like that, as all it really does is reinforce the negative stereotypes that I and my nerd friends have been laboring under for years. Even movies that I really enjoy like Weird Science manage to paint nerds as total geeks who eventually get a lucky break. I don’t want to add to the problem.
So what I am focused on are movies that feature nerds who are in no way apologetic or ashamed of being a nerd, and use their nerd skills to advance themselves and their agenda. I like to see this as a little window into a perfect world where nerds rule everything and the jocks all dig ditches for a living.
10. Shawn of the Dead. Honestly, this one almost didn’t make my list, as an argument could be made that Shaun doesn’t really qualify as a nerd in the true sense of the word. He has a cute girlfriend, doesn’t really work with computers or technology other than to sell it, and starts the movie without a clue how to fight zombies. However, he is an avid video game player, and manages to survive a zombie apocalypse, so I think I will include it, albeit at the very bottom of my list. Of course, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are among the biggest nerds on the planet, so anything they do is worth consideration. (image courtesy of the horror movie t shirts category)
9. Office Space. Revenge of the cubical gnomes. Yes, the main characters in this film are nerds in every sense of the term, and while they fail miserably at least attempt to use some nerd skills to stick it to the man. Also, did I ever mention I have had a huge crush on Jeniffer Aniston for years?
8. Spiderman. Yes, Peter Parker is a super nerd. Geeky, glasses, into science. What more could be asked for? I almost stuck Superman in here as well, but realized that Clark Kent is actually Superman pretending to be a nerd to hide his identity, while Peter Parker is a nerd who gained super powers.
7. Ghostbusters. These guys are nerds, especially Egon Spengler, and don’t care who knows it. Also, the amount of geek credibility this movie gets for not only casting the great Sigourney Weaver as the love interest but also showing us one of the best thigh shots in nerd movie history is astronomical. By the way, if you ever are looking for a definition of nerdy/sexy, just take a look at Annie Potts as the receptionist in this film.
6. Darkman. Yes, there are those who say this movie sucks, but I beg to differ. Liam Neeson as Peter Westlake is a total nerd. Besides, which of us nerds has never dreamed of being a scientist and having a horrible accident give us both super powers and a thirst for revenge? Hell, when I got my laser eye treatment I was praying for a freak accident that would give me the ability to shoot lasers OUT of my eyes.
5. the Matrix. Neo is a computer hacking nerd, in spite of looking like he works at Abercrombie and Fitch. One of the issues I have with the second and third Matrix (among several dozen) is the fact that they kind of drop the idea of him as an obsessed computer nerd and just make him into a cheesy pretty boy action hero.
4. the Incredibles. Yes, my favorite Pixar movie (Steve Jobs, thank you). You might think there is no nerd in this one, as Mr. and Mrs. Incrdible are pretty cool, at least at the start of the movie. However, you are forgetting the biggest nerd out there, Syndrome (formally known as Buddy). He is a complete and utter scientist nerd and could not care less if you thought so. He gets rejected in a way all nerds my age remember having happen as a kid and uses his brain to get his revenge. Awesome.
3. Back to the Future. Dr. Emmet Brown was a complete nerd who was willing to go toe to toe with terrorists in order to advance his science. Also, Marty McFly was pretty geeky too. Of course, a real geek would understand how the Butterfly Effect would make it almost impossible for Marty to mess around in the past and still exist. Even a slight altering of his parents time line would most like cause one of the other several million sperm cells to fertilize his mom’s egg, giving him a completely different genetic structure. But I digress.
2. Real Genius. Nerds doing what nerds do in the best way possible. This movie rules, and if you haven’t seen it stream it tonight to increase your nerd credibility. These guys had nothing to apologize for, and used their brains to totally screw with people. The only issue I had was the idea of a super hot woman who’s only goal in life was to sleep with the 10 smartest men on the planet. If women actually exist who are attracted to intellect rather than looks and/or money please point them in my direction. I have yet to meet one.
1. Wargames. David Lightman is an early hacker computer nerd who totally screwed with the defense department and almost blew up the world. What else can a true nerd dream of? Except for the underwear in his room he made no apologies for his lifestyle and managed to outsmart any number of jockish military types. This movie was the first one to really show what a true nerd is potentially capable of, and since I was starting high school that year I could have only wished that my so called peers might have picked up a warning from it. Unfortunately, their limited intellect prevented them from understanding the dangers of messing with someone with a superior intellect. Savor the irony with me for a moment.
Anyway, that’s my list. I had a bunch that almost made it, but I feel good about this. Feel free to disagree or point out any movies I might have missed by commenting here or via Twitter @NerdKungFu. You can follow me too if you like.
I’m kind of dreading this weekend, as the first movie I will probably have to see will be Footloose and I’m viewing that with all the anticipation of a root canal. No movies tomorrow as Thursday is my regular Warhammer night. If you like my writing I have been doing more descriptions on the commercial site, so check out some of the ones on the home page. Most of them are pretty funny, in my opinion. Thanks for reading, and have a great night.
Dave
Dream House Movie Review
House of Confusion.
This movie was bitterly disappointing for me. Not because I was expecting something great. I went into it expecting it to suck. It disappointed me because I could see elements of a great movie in here that failed to surface. It’s like the ship the U.S.S. Bad Script sailed to within sight of the Port of Good Movie only to run aground on Fumble Reef. (Titanic image courtesy of the funny t shirts category)
The best way to describe this movie is confused, in that it shifts gears several times. It started off as kind of a really interesting psycho drama, then alternates back and forth between a haunted house and whodunit with a miserably predictable ending. It looked great as a psychodrama, decent as a ghost movie, and painfully stupid as a whodunit. I can almost feel the inexorable hand of the studio pulling the puppet strings to cause the tonal shifts.
The other weird thing about this film was the two stars, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, met and fell in love in real life while working on the movie yet the on screen chemistry seemed a little off. I think the problem is they acted like a new couple, which in real life they were, but in the movie they had been married for at least seven years.
Anyway, the movie. Daniel Craig quits his job as an editor in NYC to move to his new house in the burbs. His hot wife Libby (Rachel Weisz – the Mummy, the Mummy Returns, the Constant Gardener, the Fountain) and two super cute daughters (Taylor Geare – the little girl from Inception and Clair Geare, the younger little girl from Inception) are glad he is going to stay home. Things seem idyllic but there is some guy running around outside, and some teenagers holding Black Mass in the basement. Turns out the family that lived there before were all killed by the father.
I don’t want to get too into the story, as this is a mystery and a spoiler would definitely detract from your enjoyment of it. Mystery/ghost movie/psycho drama hijinks ensue in almost equal portions. The story kind of plods along, and the whole mixing genres manages to take 90% of the horror out of the film, especially at the end. There are a few startling moments, but nothing that really shocked anyone.
The stars. Daniel Craig. No one does intense like him. One star. Overall the acting from all parties was really solid. One star. Some decent camera work to reflect the shifts in tone needed for the psychodrama shifts. One star. Dialog was decent, and most of the relationships on screen seemed solid. One star. Total: Four stars.
The black holes. The movie couldn’t decide what kind of film it wanted to be when it grew up. The genre shift was really annoying, especially at the end. One black hole. The police acted unlike any police I have ever seen or heard of. One black hole. The movie kind of trudged along. Pacing was really slow. One star. The ending had a funny smell on it from being pulled out of the scriptwriters ass. One black hole. A suspense film with little to no suspense and a thriller with no thrills. One black hole. Total: five black holes.
So a total of one black hole. Kind of a neutral score, which reflects how I felt coming out of the theater. Not really dissatisfied, but not really satisfied. Is it worth seeing? Not at full price. Is it worth $5 on a Sunday? Sure, if there is nothing else playing. Honestly, if you are looking for scary seen Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. More thrilling Real Steel. Better drama 50/50. I think the biggest problem this movie faces is that there are a bunch of other, better movies out at the moment.
Thanks for reading. Sorry about the short review but when a movie doesn’t really grab me or annoy me I find it hard to write about. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. I might do a list tomorrow, or another Star Trek retrospective. I’m up to Insurrection, which means I am almost at the worst of the dross. Oh, well.
Dave
Real Steel Movie Review
Real Fun.
I have been saying for months, ever since I saw the trailer, that I really wanted to see this film. My friends all, to a man or woman, laughed, saying it looked stupid and cheesy. However, I would counter, it is about ROBOTS BEATING THE HELL OUT OF EACH OTHER! How could that be any less than AWESOME?
Well, any number of ways. Fortunately this movie managed to avoid most of those pitfalls and works its way into what was an all around decent and super fun movie.
In the extremely large lexicon of toys I wish I had had as a kid but my dad was either too cheap, poor, or drunk to buy Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots ranked pretty high. Of course it is probably a good thing I didn’t get it, as it would have required me to have a friend to play it against. Still, pretty cool, and as a consequence I am fascinated by the idea of robots fighting. I used to watch Battle Bots, but after a while realized they were all the same robot designed to flip their opponents over, which honest got really boring after a while. I have long dreamed of seeing robots actually fight, and this film delivers. (Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em image courtesy of the nerd t shirts category)
The first sign that this movie was not going to suck occurred 30 minutes before it started when my best friend texted me the very interesteing fact that it was based on a story by Richard Matherson called Steel. He also wrote the great book I am Legend, which got made into movies two and a half times, the best being the Omega Man starring gun nut Charlton Heston (I am not going to talk about the horrible job they did with I am Legend, the Will Smith mutation). This got me even more jazzed than before and was happy when the film did not dissappoint.
The story itself is nothing original. Take any 80’s era underdog movie and substitute robots for humans and you pretty much have it. The Karate Kid, the Bad News Bears, and Rocky all seem to surface here. Rocky in particular they seem to borrow from heavily. But just because the story is not original does not mean it isn’t good, and is supported by some awesome acting, dialog, direction, and above all, big robots.
Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, an ex boxer who now operates and promotes fighting robots. His last robot gets wrecked by a bull (little weird there) and he is at rock bottom, owing a ton of money do different thugs and having no prospects. His ex girlfriend dies, leaving the his sons guardianship, Max Kenton (Dakota Goyo, a really good kid actor who has been in Thor, Resurrecting the Champ, and a movie that looks interesting called Defendor. Kind of a decent geek filmography for an 11 year old) in question. The story is a little complicated, but he manages to get the kids rich uncle to agree to pay him a ton of money to give him custody but in return Charlie has to keep the kid for the summer so they can do their romantic vacation to Italy. He uses the money to buy another robot, Noisy Boy, who gets his ass beat and killed in his first fight.
At that point things seem at an all time low, and Charlie and Max are left scavenging an old robot junk yard for parts to build a new bot. Max finds and recovers Atom, and old sparring bot that they bring back to the training hall/garage. He is a very old sparring robot but has a rare “shadow” function that allows him to mimic actions he sees humans do and integrate them into his fighting style. Charlie trains him and the story moves on from there. Robot battle hijinks ensues. At that point they are pretty much making Robot Rocky, so I won’t bore you with the details. Max and Charlie come to bond, the Atom surprises everyone, and you walk away feeling as good as you can about a robot film (which in my case is pretty damned good).
The stars. Fighting robots. Three stars. Great acting all around. Two stars. All of the robots looked unbelievably cool and bad ass. One star. The CGI and special effects seemed flawless. I really felt like there were 10 foot tall giants running around with the humans on the screen (I have more or less stopped giving stars for good special effects, as it is now kind of expected, but this was good enough for me to make an exception). One star. All the antagonists (Kevin Durand in particular) were pretty cool, and the whole subplot of Charlie owing him a ton of money added rather than detracted from the film. One star. The love interest (Evangeline Lilly-Lost, the Hurt Locker) was cute but not just a super hot eye candy bimbo that seems to litter the screen these days (cough cough Transformers cough cough), and can act. One star. The fight scenes were brutal and very cool, and due (I guess) to the fact that they were all CGI they didn’t have to do the lazy one second cut crap that bugs me in movie action so much these days. Very well choreographed. You can actually follow the action. Two stars. Did I already give stars for fighting robots? How about two more stars for an all around awesome movie experience. Total: thirteen stars.
The black holes. The overall story, while good, was kind of dopey and overall extremely derivative (that’s my polite way of saying copied from) of a bunch of other movies, especially Rocky. Not that it wasn’t a great movie experience, but still. One black hole. The scene where Max finds Atom was a level of suspension of disbelief that was completely out of tone for the entire rest of the movie. Everything else seemed really realistic (as realistic as fighting robots can be) but that whole sequence was just kind of silly. One black hole. The opening fight scene between Charlie’s first robot, Ambush, and a rodeo bull was kind of dumb, unnecessary, unrealistic, and had elements of animal cruelty that were a little off putting. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
So a grand total of 10 stars, and my high recommendation that you go see it on the biggest screen you can find. I am seriously considering seeing it again on iMax, and I never do that. Very, very fun. Don’t bother with a date on this one. She won’t get it, and odds are will see you as lame for being into it.
Kind of a short review, so I am going to share an observation I had. Before I started doing these reviews I would enjoy seeing trailers at the beginning of the films. Gave me a chance to pick out the movies I thought I would enjoy seeing in the future. However, now that I am pretty much seeing everything trailers are more like a cancer patient being given a schedule of his upcoming chemotherapy treatments. Some I look forward too, but a lot of them look like upcoming pain. On that note, if anyone has any idea how I can start to see movies prior to release please let me know. Do I contact the studios, or what? I’d like to have my reviews come out before their release, if possible.
Follow me or message me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Thanks for reading. I’ll probably see the Ides of March tomorrow. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Star Trek Retrospective: First Contact
Back on this. Star Trek First Contact. Not as bad as Generations, but that’s like saying being infested with intestinal parasites is not as bad as catching a flesh eating virus. It’s probably the best of the Next Gen crew movies, but still chock full of idiocy. It is worth noting that two different qualified directors turned this movie down before Jonathon Frakes, known only for playing anti-roll model Commander Riker, took it on. Nothing like giving a completely unknown director a major production job. (First Contact image from the Star Trek T Shirts category).
The whole “what was happening when this movie was made” thing is starting to lose its punch, as we are now close enough to where those events are less retro and more “oh, yeah.” However, I am a creature of habit and so will continue. The year was 1996. I had discovered a number of reasons to get out of Southern California and moved to Santa Cruz, home of the Banana Slugs (they are huge and disgusting) and pot. I was living Three’s Company style with two hot women, one of the women’s daughter, and three huge dogs. Prince Charles and Princess Diana got divorced as Mad Cow Disease rampaged across England. The Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden moves there. Iraq demolishes its biological weapons laboratory. A cyclone in India kills over 2000. A car bomb blows up at a US military base in Saudi Arabia. DVDs are launched in Japan. Windows NT 4.0 and Internet Explorer 3 are released (I use Firefox, mostly). Duke Nukem 3d is released. The first mammal, a sheep named Dolly, is cloned. Butler based search engine Ask Jeeves is founded. Music has been overdosing on suck pills, with popular music including the Spice Girls, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Mariah Carey, Alanis Morisette, Foo Fighters, Lenny Kravitz, Sheryl Crow, Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine, and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (those last two weren’t bad, actually). Movies were also really sucking, with Independence Day, Mission Impossible, Twister, the Nutty Professor, Jerry McGuire, 101 Dalmations, and The Rock (again, the last one was good, but most of those kind of sucked). Kind of a blah year, to be honest.
Anyway, First Contact. It should have been great. Next Gen crew, the Borg, and lots of stuff getting blown up. What was the problem? Well, as I have stated before, time travel as a plot device is a terrible tool to write your story around. It is the first resort of incompetent, lazy writers (J.J. Abrams this is going out to you too). The problem is that, while it looks like an easy thing to do, it is actually really hard to pull off. It should also be noted that the TV show producer, Rick Berman, who was kind of responsible for the horrible Generation plot, really wanted a time travel story. I’ll talk a bit more about the whole time travel thing in a little bit.
First, what did First Contact have? Borg. The entire Next Gen crew, including Marina Sirtis still young enough to look kind of hot (she was 40 at the time of filming). Some decent explosions. A tribute to Star Trek canon (again, J.J. Abrams). More Borg. Massive plot holes.
What it didn’t have: the same Picard we all know from the TV series. Instead of the intellectual man of peace for whom violence is a last resort we get a bloodthirsty maniac who’s only goal is to kill all the Borg, in spite of the many times he has spared them in the past. An understanding of the Butterfly Effect or the Temporal Prime Directive. A reason for Worf to have survived the battle and be aboard the Enterprise.
Let’s get into the plot holes and issues I have. The major one, and the reason this film fails miserably as a time travel plot, is the Butterfly Effect. Remember the TOS episode the City on the Edge of Forever where Bones goes back in time and saves the life of a woman, eventually causing the Nazis to win WWII and completely change the future? What effect to you think the Borg raining unholy hell down on the rocket base in the past, killing dozens of people, could possibly have on the future? I guess they managed to kill Zefram Cochrane’s entire flight crew, as they now have to stick Geordie and Riker in there. No way those people would have ever been interviewed, or maybe written a book. Then, to make matters worse, Picard and is crew take the Temporal Prime Directive and use it as toilet paper. Advanced technology is used extensively, including Geordie’s eyes and Data. Just stupid.
As long as we are on it, if the Borg have a time travel device why did they feel the need to fight through the Federation blockade with a single cube and THEN go back in time? Why not go back in time in some remote corner of the galaxy and then, I don’t know, use their warp drive to travel to Earth? Also, what is up with disrupting first contact? Why not go back to the 100 Years War, assimilate the planet, and not have to worry about first contact? Then send another cube to Vulcan and assimilate them. Also, sure Picard managed to stop this one time travel thing, but if there is one thing the Borg is good at it is information redundancy. Why would they not make 100 time travel ships and shoot all over the continuum? See what I mean about time travel as being a stupid plot device? They can travel back in time when it is convenient for the story but at any time it raises awkward questions they forget how to do it. Also, Riker and Troy, the two headed anchor of the Next Gen, give Cochrane multiple details about the future. I think they just wanted to have a big dramatic scene like that.
OK, what happened to Picards brain? How did he turn so bloodthirsty, even with regards to his own assimilated crewmen? Wasn’t he assimilated and repatriated? What about Seven of Nine? Or all the other ex Borg people they kept meeting? Nope. We need to mercy execute them all. I seem to recall Picard being really upset every time a single crew member died, but now he is ready to Kevorkian the lot of them. I don’t really question the moral choice in this situation, but what bugs me is it is so contrary to Picards nature as portrayed by years of Next Generation episodes. Remember when he had the chance to destroy the entire Borg race with a computer virus and didn’t do it? That was after he had been assimilated, by the way. It’s almost like the writers watched about five episodes of the series while stoned off their ass and then wrote the script. I am actually really puzzled by this. Rick Berman and Jonathon Frakes had both worked on the show from it’s inception. Could they not see the massive shift in tone going on here?
How did Councilor Troy, a character not well know for her technical qualifications with modern technology, become qualified to run Mission Control for a 21st century rocket launch? Somewhere during production I suspect there was a serious argument along the lines of “I’m not getting enough screen time, dammit!” Also, didn’t any of the 21st century ground crew never ask “Hey, who is this chick? Also where did Cochrane find two trained and qualified copilots at the last minute? I don’t remember them being at any of the meetings.”
Is Data really bulletproof? Seems like I can remember him taking damage from all kinds of blunt force trauma.
Speaking of flesh eating virus, why does engineering have the coolant that is anathema to all life inside a delicate plexiglass tube that is totally exposed? Seems like you are one forklift accident away from losing your entire engineering staff.
Anyway, there are a bunch of others, and if I had more time I would share them with you in excruciating detail. I’m not saying First Contact is bad, per se. It was certainly better than Generations, and arguably the Motion Picture. Just that it could have benefited from a non brain damaged writer or two.
That’s it. I’ve already blown off enough work to write this today. I will say after my list of best animated movies I went back last night and rewatched Batman Mask of the Phantasm. While watching it I noticed something really important. I was 100% correct when I put that as the best animated movie I have ever seen. You are a fool if you haven’t seen it.
You are also a fool if you don’t follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. I don’t tweet a lot, but everyone one of them is a gem. Thanks for reading. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Top 10 Best Animated Movies
Last night I was at a friends house perusing her DvD collection and came across a couple movies that sparked my interest on this topic. I love cartoons, and in many cases prefer them to real movies (and, to be honest, my own real life). My theory is any idiot can point a camera at other idiots to make a film, but the expense of creating animation is so high (at least for hand drawn) that they need to make sure the story is solid before even getting it going. Puts motivation on the writers, in most cases.
That is not to say there isn’t a lot of animated crap out there, but those movies usually fall into the trap of pandering to uptight kids parents (not the kids themselves, ironically). Also, this list has my own twist, so don’t expect to see a lot of smiley, happy Disney movies. Most of these have some kind of dark twist or complicated story.
10. Titan A.E. This movie wasn’t necessarily the greatest story ever told, but it was the very first movie to make extensive use of CGI technology. It was also a post-apocalyptic story (A.E. stands for After Earth) that had a dark theme to it. It explored some fairly cool themes as well. The movie has taken on cult status, but I feel I gain a lot of geek credibility by having actually seen it in the theater. This movie was also the straw that broke the camel known as Fox Animation Studios’s back, and whenever Fox suffers I feel good (still haven’t forgiven them for cancelling Firefly and about 10 other great shows).
9. Wall-E. I know I said no cute movies, but this one is definitely one of my favorite Pixar themes. Complex story, awesome animation, and when you look at the fact that humanity has continued it’s current trend towards grotesque, morbid obesity it has a dark theme too. I went into this film expecting kiddy pap and walked out seriously impressed.
8. Ghost in the Shell. I can’t really call myself an anime fanatic, but I enjoy the genre and any nerd worth his salt needs to see this movie at some point. Futuristic crime thriller set in cyberpunk Japan, it featured super cool cyborgs and high technology crime. It sparked all kinds of associated video games and manga series’s. Incidentally, the literal translation of the Japanese title is “Mobile Armored Riot Police”. Cool.
7. South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. This movie really showed something important that most other films derived from tv shows fail at; it is possible to have a great stand alone film derived from a TV show. This movie did what South Park always does-pushed the envelope so far into the uncomfortable that it kind of pushed out the other side. Also, I happen to still love South Park, so this is kind of a personal thing.
6. Akira. Another great anime film, this one features cyberpunk motorcycle street gangs and dark, gruesome action. This one also does not pull back on the realistic violence, and ends in a level of mass destruction rarely matched in any other animated film.
5. Spirited Away. Woof. Talk about dark. Rather, talk about dark that masquerades as cute. Great story, as well as a great look into Japanese culture, this epic fish out of water story is one I will always watch given the chance. I have seen it multiple times and ever time I watch it I catch some other detail I missed entirely.
4. the Incredibles. Great story, great animation. Some might make the mistake of assuming this is a cute kiddy film, but let’s not forget the fact that Dash is killing Syndrome’s henchmen left and right and laughing the whole time. Also, remember the corpse of Gazerbeam? Or the fact that Syndrome gets sucked into a jet engine in what could be accurately described as one of the most gruesome death possible? Definitely adult themes here. Of course, the story rocks, the characters all rule, and in an ironic twist the entire film was intended to be a spoof of the Fantastic Four yet somehow managed to remain more true to the original FF than any of the actual movies.
3. the Iron Giant. This film was such a cool experience for me when I saw it in the theater. It started out as a cute ET giant robot film, with the Giant learning about what it means to be human and bonding with young Hogarth (I wish I was named Hogarth) while being pursued by a federal agent. Just when you are ready to pass out from so much sugar in your blood, the Giant thinks Hogarth is killed and turn into an UNSTOPPABLE, UNHOLY KILLING MACHINE! This is like going to see a community theater production of Hamlet and in the third act a bunch of strippers come out and perform. The Iron Giant kicks the crap out of the best military the US of the 1060’s can produce, only to revert to his kind self and save the day. My only real issue with the film is the ending. The Giant flies up to intercede the nuclear missile coming in to kill everyone. Couldn’t he just have whipped out one of the several dozen guns he had just been using and shoot it from a safe distance? Oh, well. Great film, and actually really good for kids.
2. the Nightmare Before Christmas. What a fun story. The twisted Christmas preparations Halloween town was making were great. Jack Skellington is awesome, and in one of the weirdest twists of my cinema life I actually like the songs. The only other musical where the songs didn’t have me chewing on the arm rest was Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog. This story presents a character arc in the truest sense of the term, with Jack showing a steady, progressive character development throughout the film.
1. Batman Mask of the Phantasm. I guess I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have a film on here odds are most of you have never heard of, but this is my all time favorite animated movie. What this story addresses that almost all other films and cartoons treat as peripheral at best is that Batman is not really about Batman. It is about a human being named Bruce Wayne who, in spite of all his wealth, has one of the most messed up and troubled lives you could possibly imagine. Haunted by the death of his parents (and secretly blaming himself for it), he will never find peace or love in this lifetime. Of course, the Phantasm is a great villain, the story is convoluted in the coolest way possible, and we get to see the Joker as voiced by the great Mark Hamill. Also, violent and dark as hell, without the happy ending most cartoons seem to look for. In my opinion this is one of the best Batman stories ever told, and from a script point of view will take it over any of the other Batman movies except maybe the Dark Knight. Of course that was about Heath Ledger as Joker, so from a strict story perspective Mask is superior. (Lightning Strikes image courtesy of the Batman t shirt category).
That’s my list. Feel free to disagree with me. I am sure I missed something really cool. Just don’t spam me with Disney stuff. I don’t care if you think Bueaty and the Beast or the Little Mermaid are the best out there. They are fun, but given that they are all derived from fairy tales and more or less star the same character and rely on cuteness to make the movie happen I can’t go there. Also, neither of them qualify in the “I actually like the songs” category.
Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. If you do you can send me your opinions directly. Or just post here. As long as you don’t cuss I’ll put it up. Thanks for reading. Talk to you soon.
Dave
What’s Your Number? Movie Review
I guess my number is 2 (black holes).
First off, let me curse Regal Jack London Theater to the very bowels of Hell for being sold out on Dream House, forcing me to watch this chick flick.
Anyway, this movie is yet another female-centric R rated comedies that wants to make women talking about their vaginas a subject of humor. Unfortunately, Bridesmaids already did that this year and, more importantly, did it competently. I say female-centric because it features a female protagonist who says a lot of raunchy things, but in all honesty if I were a woman I would be pissed off at such a passive doormat being a main character in this film She takes no action or charge without help from her friends, gets regularly treated horribly by the men in her life and never speaks out against them, and can’t even accomplish her stupid goal without enlisting the aid of the man across the hall.
The movie starts off with Ally Darling (Anna Faris-Scary Movie 2 and 4, Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs, something called House Bunny) getting dumped by her lame vegetarian bike guy boyfriend, who leaves her with a line that any self respecting woman would have punched him in the balls for but in another womens lib inhibiting move she takes with a smile (Vegetarian image from the novelty t shirt category). She gets fired later that morning and on the train ride home discovers in a women’s magazine that the national average number of sex partners for women is 10.5, and any woman who sleeps with more than 20 is not likely to ever get married (fortunately, if I were a woman I would still have quite a cushion, if you know what I mean). She does some math and discovers that she has just been dumped by number 19. She sets a resolution to not sleep with number 20 until she is sure he is the one, and then proceeds to get drunk off her ass and sleep with the boss who just fired her.
So, with her second virginity plan shot down, she now comes up with the completely ridiculous plan of trying to hook up with one of her ex boyfriends, due to the fact that her sister is getting married to her ex (there is an extensive sub plot surrounding her sisters upcoming wedding. It is actually pretty integral to the story, so I won’t black hole it). In order to track down (stalk) her ex’s she recruits her across the hall neighbor Colin Shea (Chris Evans – Captain America, Fantastic Four. Actually quite a good filmography from a nerd perspective), who is a sleazy womanizer who seduces a different girl each night and then needs Ally’s help trying to get rid of her, or at least Ally’s apartment to hide out in until they figure out how they have just been used and leave. Anyway, unfunny romantic comedy hijinks ensues. Colin manages to track down a series of men who are all, for one reason or another, inappropriate. Naturally romance ensues between the woman who has sworn celibacy and the man who plans to sleep with every woman in the greater Boston area. The romance has all the chemistry of mixing green food coloring into beer to make St. Paddy’s Day beverages. The plot plods towards the painfully predictable and totally expected ending.
The stars. Acting was decent. You do tend to believe the characters. One star. Anna Faris is cute if you are into blondes, and whoever they got to be her body double in the extremely brief and non-revealing nude (nud-ish) scenes was pretty hot. One star. Decent supporting characters, including her mother (Blythe Danner), sister (Ari Graynor), the bridesmaids, and the assorted men. One star. Dialog was decent. One star. A few funny moments. One star. It’s nice to see a movie shot in Boston, as opposed to LA or NYC. One star. Total: six stars.
The black holes. Predictable with a capital P. I’ve had more surprising endings from kids singing the A-B-C song. One black hole. The two main characters, Ally and Colin, are both in their own way so unlikeable that by the end of the movie I hated not only them but everyone in the city of Boston (sorry if you live there. Nothing personal). She’s a whiny passive aggressive loser and he’s a sleazy aggressive loser. One black hole. Anna Faris may be funny, but she has a voice that could cut glass. If you loaded 6-9 cats into a cement mixer and turned it on you might approximate the sound. One black hole. Shockingly few funny moments in a so-called comedy, and most of them were one the basest level. One black hole. Ally’s father was the only supporting character that felt fake and out of place. One black hole. I’m going to put this out as bluntly as I can: if you are going to have a Rated R movie and it’s not for violence, for the love of all that is good include a couple decent nude scenes. The ones in this movie were fleeting and mostly covered. One black hole. The romance felt forced and lacked chemistry. One black hole. Total: eight black holes.
So a total of 2 black holes, and hence the subtitle for this movie (my real number is not two. Not a ton more than that, but not two). Meh. If you are looking for something cute that you won’t have to use your brain a lot for, go for it. I can actually recommend this as a date movie, in that if she starts thinking about her number she might have to decide you are the one. On the other hand, if you haven’t yet slept with your date this may well backfire on you when she decides you aren’t worth adding to her score, so tread carefully.
Short review, but honestly not a lot of meat for me to chew on here. Thanks for reading. Still more to see this week, but I might just do another Star Trek retrospective tomorrow, or maybe think of something new. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Talk to you all soon.
Dave
50/50 Movie Review
100% a good film.
I have been looking forward to this film. I am a Joseph Gorden-Levitt fan ever since he was on 3rd Rock From the Sun and thought he was excellent in Inception. Seth Rogan I enjoy a love/hate relationship with; love for Superbad and Pineapple Express, hate for his active participation in the cinema abortion known as the Green Hornet (Knocked Up I have mixed feelings about. Good in parts, but possibly a case study in the worst relationship in human history). Anna Kendrick I don’t have a real opinion about, although I liked her in this one. She still carries the stink of Twilight about her, however.
So last night I went and was not disappointed. The story was real, with some funny moments and a lot of scary, depressing moments. I was honestly touched at several points, and while I hate admitting I am becoming more girl-like as I get older actually felt myself tearing up at a few moments (some people might call that maturing emotionally, but I refuse to walk down that path). What was cool was the emotional response was honest, sincere, and built up over time, not the hamhanded “let’s kill the one character you like in the movie” approach I suffered through in One Day. The director (Jonathan Levine, who has done nothing I have heard of but whom I expect to see a lot more from) and writer (Will Reiser, who’s only real credit seems to be the Allie G Show) managed to make the audience connect with every character on the screen, but most closely with Adam, the protagonist. You really end up identifying with him and his situation, and I spent the last 30 minutes of the movie praying that he wouldn’t die.
I don’t know who to lay the laurels on for this one. Honestly, I really think it was a near perfect storm of great acting, directing, and story writing that led to such a good experience. Of course, the last film I saw before this was Taylor Lautner’s lamentable and horribly misnamed Abduction, so it could be that the part of my brain responsible for movie appreciation has taken one too many hits to the head. This film was like a man dying of thirst finding a full water cooler in the middle of the Sahara Desert.
Anyway, the story is of Adam, a young Seattle urbanite who, in spite of his extremely cautious and healthy lifestyle, develops a rare form of cancer on his spine. His best friend is Kyle (Seth Rogan), a lackadaisical, unhealthy slacker. The story goes through the drama of Adam dealing with his selfish and self centered cheating girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard, the hot blind girl from the Village, but she also played in Spiderman 3, Terminator Salvation, and the Lady in the Water, so she doesn’t exactly have a great filmography) who is super hot but such a reprehensible person you want to cheer when Adam boots her out. He has to also deal with his extremely engaging worrywart mother (Angelica Houston, looking better than I have seen in years), his Alzheimer father (real trend towards Alzheimer dad’s this year), and his own emotional stress and stages as he goes through the suffering of chemotherapy and eventually surgery. He is aided by the very young councilor in training Katherine (Anna Kendrick) who comes to play a bigger part in his life, but his rock throughout the movie is his friendship with Kyle. Kyle shows what true friendship is about. I don’t want to give this one any spoilers as I expect you all to see it, but when you do look for the scene where Adam finds the book and you will know where I really started to tear up.
The stars. Extremely well acted. Two stars. Good story, if somewhat linear and kind of predicable, at least in parts. Two stars. Some really funny moments. One star. It managed to pry a real emotional response out of my cold, dead heart (odds are it will have most of you crying like a little baby, so macho am I). One star. Anna Kendrick was looking heartbreakingly cute throughout the movie, and can actually act. One star. The Adam shaving his head scene was really fun and cool. One star. All the interactions between the characters, especially Adam and Kyle, were extremely real. One star. A generally good movie experience. Two stars. Total: eleven stars.
However, as any of you who have read a few of these knows, the movies without any black holes are extremely few and far between (and for the record, they are The Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner Directors Cut, TWOK, and Fight Club. Boba Fett image courtesy of the Star Wars t shirts category), and this movie is not one of them. First of all, the trailers I saw made this movie look about 10 times funnier than it actually was. I know, how much can they do with cancer, but still there were some great lines in the trailers that got cut out of the film entirely. One black hole. While well written, a careful analysis of the story shows a decent percentage of cliche-sium. One black hole. Finally, again while the movie was overall great, the shift in tone from humorous buddy movie to emotional tear jerker was jarring at times. I’m not sure how they could have gotten around that, but still. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
Total of eight stars, and I do highly recommend this film. If you can convince a girl to go on a date with you it is a great date flick. See it in the theater in order to support good movies, but honestly you won’t miss much if you wait to see it at home. In fact, this might be the perfect movie night at home date movie, if you know what I mean.
Thanks as always for reading. I think tomorrow I will see Dream House even though it looks like it will creep me the hell out. Actaully, if I can find it nearby I want to see Machinegun Preacher. On the other hand, if my movie partner joins me tomorrow I will probably have to see something tamer, like I Don’t Know How She Does it or What’s Your Number. God save me. Anyway, follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Abduction Movie Review
If you listen carefully you can actually hear your brain cells dying while watching this film.
OK. This movie sucked, but really that kind of falls into the category of “Gee, Dave. What were you expecting?” The problem is in addition to wooden, soulless “acting” and amateurish action, the plot has holes in it so massive they have collapsed in on themselves and each created a quantum singularity, sucking the rest of the film (and probably the next three films you see) into oblivion. The biggest one, and the one that had me grinding my teeth last night as I tried to fall asleep, the fact that the movie is called Abduction and yet through the entirety of the film ABSOLUTELY NO ONE IS EVER ABDUCTED! The trailers made it seem as if his foster parents had kidnapped him from some kind of super secret lab (a much better story, IMO) or WalMart parking lot, but the fact is he was placed in a foster care home with the blessings of his widowed father. During the entire movie there is no other reference to anyone being abducted, except for the fact that he finds his picture on an abduction website. That, however, is quickly established as a trap to try to find the kid. At one point his love interest gets tied up, but that is more of a hostage/prisoner situation than an actual abduction. No abducting goes on through the course of the movie.
I can actually see the retarded logic that led to this title. Odds are the working title was originally more descriptive. Something like Sizzle Chest Man Boy Shows off his Amazing Abs for all the Dumb Teenage Girls. Oh, Yeah. There are Some Spies in There Somewhere Too. At some point the producers (who go suspiciously uncredited on IMDB. I had to dig into an open casting call in order to find their names. Just to make sure all credit gets to the deserving, here they are: Dan Lautner (no other credits. I assume he’s Taylor’s father. Always a good move giving your star’s family a job on the movie), Roy Lee (the Ring, the Grudge, the Departed-anyone else seeing a pattern in these titles), Doug Davison (exact same credits as Roy. Are they related too?), Ellen Goldsmith-Vein (crap and more crap. Also, who is named Vein?), Lee Stollman (no other producer credit, but he gets Thanks credit on a ton of movies, like Pulp Fiction. What do you do to get a Thanks credit? Park the directors car?), and Gabriel Mason (not a lot, but one that has the most amazing title ever: Assassination of a High School President with Bruce Willis (???). I think I have to NetFlix this one)) are all sitting around and one of them says “You know what’s hot lately? One word movie titles. Twilight, Priest, Drive, Taken. We should do something like that.” at which point another one says “Well, there Taylor Lautner is known for his abs, and there is a minor reference to an abduction website. We should call it Abduction.” The rest of them agree and do more coke.
Anyway, what can laughingly be called the story. Taylor Lautner plays Nathan, a troubled teenager and possibly the biggest pollutant to the human gene pool since thalidomide. He starts off the movie in the stupidest “Lets show the world how wild and crazy I am” scene by riding on the windshield of a truck doing 75 mph on a country road. On the one hand I thought this scene even teenagers would think was dumb, but on the other hand I kind of liked it in that I could fantasize about a horrific accident that would end the movie quickly or leave Taylor remaking My Left Foot. Unfortunately I was not to be so blessed and he survives the trip to a wild party where everyone present is young, attractive, and white (except for the literal token black guy, who in a fit of originality takes on the role of helpful sidekick). They proceed to have more fun in one night than I had in all of high school and most of college, leaving Nathan passed out on the lawn shirtless.
I need to accelerate the pace of this. His dad picks him up, and it turns out he has been training Nathan in martial arts all his life as an excuse to beat his son without getting arrested. Nathan has to work with his super hot (and white) neighbor Karen (Lily Collins, who played the super cute young girl in Priest) to research missing children. While doing so they find a website that has his picture on it. Bad guys come to get him. Stuff gets blown up. On and on.
You know, rather than recap the whole story, I am going to actually talk about all the major plot holes I spotted. First of all, two bad guys (Russian free agents, the villain of choice) show up at his house like 10 minutes after he finds the site. They beat the hell out of and shoot his foster mother then father, but their goal is to kidnap Nathan to make his real father give up some kind of state secret. So what is the best way to capture someone alive? Obviously plant a huge freaking bomb in the oven and blow up the entire house. They also put it on a timer that, assuming they hadn’t just gotten a beating from Nathan, would have killed them as well. Also, the bomb was the size of a microwave, and the two guys showed up carrying nothing. Did they have the bomb clenched tightly between their butt cheeks? Come on.
Then there is the whole web site trap thing. It was stated that the trap was set over two years before the events of this film. The Russians are trying to get a list of double agents back from Nathans dad. Did he get the list two years ago and has been sitting on it ever since? If not why then are the setting traps?
So Nathans foster parent and his psychiatrist (Sigourney Weaver, of all people) are CIA operatives set in place in order to keep him safe in order for his dad to be free rampaging across the spy world (apparently he’s some kind of mayhem guy). Does a lifetime assignment for three highly trained people not seem like a massive waste of resources for one kid? Why not just stick him in a foster home and have someone call them every six months? Is Nathans dad so valuable? Who is he, James Bond? Also, he is supposedly off in the world doing spy stuff, but somehow manages to teleport to Pittsburgh in order to save Nathans life a the end. Doesn’t he have all kinds of other pressing business? Also, if this list is so valuable why did he leave it around the apartment he keeps as a hidey hole, hidden on a cell phone? Even if enemy agents didn’t find it, isn’t there the slightest chance that his apartment could be broken in to? No chance a thief would want to use an untracable phone for calling his drug dealer or anything.
So there is a CIA man named Burton (Alfred Molina-Raiders of the Lost Arc, Chocolat, Spider-Man 2) who, for no apparent reason, Nathan becomes suspicious of and decides spending his life on the lamb is better than trusting. Turns out his mysterious psychic powers were correct, as Burton was actually a double agent and his name was on that list. Why, then, if the list is missing and the Russians need to kidnap the kid in order to extort it back do they need to wait until Nathan contacts their website? Couldn’t Burton just called the head Russian and said “You can find him in this crappy town in Pennsylvania. If you time it right there is a good chance you can just pick him up passed out on the lawn of some dumb kegger.”?
So Nathans father shows up at the end in order to shoot the bad guy with a sniper rifle (I know I should have thrown in a spoiler alert there, but if you are seriously looking forward to seeing this movie and don’t want it to be spoiled than I couldn’t possible do or say anything to make you any stupider. Trust me, knowing the end of this film will not detract from whatever microscopic amount of enjoyment you can siphon off this beast). He and Nathan have a tear jerking (actually I was crying on the inside through most of this movie, so I don’t think the conversation was much of a contributor) heart to heart chat. However, dad still refuses to to meet the son he hasn’t seen in 14 years for absolutely no apparent reason. Can you at least try to pretend your characters are motivated by something, mediocre writer Shawn Christensen? Throw me a fricken bone here.
Anyway, the list goes on and on, but I have actual work to do tonight so I will cut it off there. Let’s get into the stars and black holes, shall we?
The stars. Sigourney Weaver is in the film for some reason. Remember when she was in cool movies like Alien? (Alien image from one of my many nerd t shirts) One star. Umm. The Russian bad guy was kind of cool (Michael Nyqvist). One star. Total: two stars.
The black holes. Taylor Lautner. One black hole. Plot holes your house could sink into. Three black holes. In addition to plot holes, the whole story makes no sense. One black hole. A movie called Abduction that does not feature even a whiff of actual abduction. Two black holes. None of the characters had any motivation do to anything whatsoever. One black holes. Nathan starts the movie as the dumbest teenager in American history and twenty minutes later is a super spy outsmarting guys with decades of experience. Also he is instantly an expert driver. One black hole. The writer may understand the definitions of the words “character” and “development” but can’t seem to contextualize the two of them together. One black hole. A movie featuring popular high school kids doing popular high school stuff instead of getting beat up by the marching band for playing D&D during lunchtime (I wasn’t cool enough to get beat up by the football team). One black hole. A million, billion cliche’s and stereotypes, including the only black character in the film being the helpful sidekick. One black hole. Dialog that made me wish for the restful sound of fingernails on a blackboard. One black hole. Total: thirteen black holes.
So a grand total of eleven black holes. Do not see this film. More importantly, do not let your children see this film. Not that it has any bad content. It rests firmly in the PG-13 trench. Just that we don’t need to encourage this sort of thing on any level, and honestly your kids will be stupider for having seen this film.
Anyway, I am trying to decide if there is enough insulin in the world to deal with the avalanche of sweetness that will wash over me when I see Dolphin Tale. Some decent stuff coming out this weekend, including 50/50, a movie I am eager to see after listening to an interview with Seth Rogan on the Howard Stern Show. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.com. Talk to you all later.
Dave
Killer Elite Movie Review
Neither killer nor elite.
Before I get into this movie, can I say that I wish Hollywood would get over the idea that parkour is still cool. Sure, it’s fun to watch idiots jump off buildings in a Darwinian attempt to improve the human race, but in movies, when we know there are all kinds of wires, safety bags, and, most importantly, stuntmen, all it does is remind us that what was cool in 2004 is lame in 2011. Hollywood has only itself to blame, as years of quick edit movies and television has given America the attention span of a three year old, and expecting us to like something even six months after it was cool is ridiculous. (I do all my own stunts image courtesy of the funny t shirt category)
Anyway, Killer Elite. The trailer was amazing. Robert DiNero, Jason Stratham, and Clive Owen in an action packed Bourne Identity-esque assassination movie? How could that go wrong? Unfortunately, the only thing they kept from the Bourne Identity was the horrible quick cut action scene editing thing that annoys me so much, as it means you can never really follow the fights (normally I would say this is due to the actors not being coordinated enough to do a single punch at a time, but I thought Jason was an experience action star). The story is ass, Robert DiNero spends most of the movie looking and sounding like a drunken homeless man, Jason Stratham’s character doesn’t seem motivated to continue breathing, much less do any action stuff, the romance story was crowbarred in so strongly they bent it, and a huge piece of the basic premise behind the story I found disturbing on a serious level.
What do I mean by that? Basically Jason’s character Danny is being blackmailed into killing three men. Who are these three men? Dangerous crime lords? Small country oppressive dictators? Ruthless corporate heads who advance themselves through the immoral exploitation of the little man? No. They are dedicated British SAS military officers who’s only crime was obeying their orders. Sorry, but I think this “Dark Horse Hero” trend in movies has just jumped the shark. You want to root for Danny, but he is killing innocent men. The so called “villain”, Clive Owen as Spike, is an ex SAS man who only wants to protect his fellow soldiers yet is painted as the evil antagonist.
Anyway, the story. Danny starts off as a hit man in Mexico, but decides to get out of the business when he comes close to killing the little girl of the man he just shot in the face (in front of her). I guess Hollywood can recognize a limit after they bulldoze right past it. He retires to Australia where he starts an awkward romance with all the chemistry of mixing dirt and water to get mud. Meanwhile, his mentor, Hunter (I don’t want to be a party pooper, but Hunter was the name of Brock Sampsons mentor in the Venture Bros. Can you guys even try to be original?), the great Robert DiNero, got himself kidnapped by an Arab sheik for the crime of not killing the SAS men who killed the sheik’s sons (in case you were thinking that maybe the SAS men were out of line, in three separate flashbacks they showed the death of each son and in each case they were armed). He is going to be executed unless Danny completes the job. Unfortunately he is only given the name of one of the men, and has to get help trying to suss out who the other two are. That tips off Spike, who works with “the Feather Men”, a cabal of ex SAS officers turned businessmen who work to make sure the ex SAS men are all protected. He is the only character worth anything, and he sets out to find Danny and save the lives of his compatriots. Assassin chaos ensues. Stuff gets blown up, innocent men get killed, and in the last 20 minutes of the movie the story, which until then had been so linear it looked like they used a laser to align it, takes so many turns and convolutions it ended up looking like someones small intestine. I thought about it all day and am still not sure what the hell was going on.
The stars. Robert DiNiro. One star. Clive Owen’s character was actually kind of cool. One star. Spy movie. One star. Decent action, at least as far as the gun play goes. One star. Decent special effects with minimum CGI. One star. Set mostly in England, which I kind of like. One star. Total: six stars.
The black holes. Except for Spike, there was no sign of a motivation from any of the character to do anything, including the peripheral characters like the British government. One black hole. Bad romance. One black hole. The story was stupid simple for the first 80% and then stupid complicated for the last 20%. One black hole. The story was written like the writers all had accounts at Unnecessary-Flashbacks-R-Us and they were having a two for one sale. One black hole. A complete misunderstanding of what insulin is and how it works (I am a type I diabetic and should know). One black hole. Somehow Danny sneaks into a high security SAS base, joins a huge unit of soldiers, and walks out with them on a maneuver, and none of them ever say “Hey, who are you again?” One black hole. For some reason Jason Stratham never, ever shaves, even when he is sneaking into a hospital to disguise himself as a doctor or into a military base disguised as a soldier. He must have the five o’clock shadow thing written into his contract. One black hole (speaking of guys in need of a shave, Robert DiNero looked like a bad Santa Claus for a lot of this movie. I won’t give them a black hole for it, but still). The sheik says he wants the British to know that the war isn’t over and he wants to make an example of the SAS men, then orders Danny to make their deaths all look like accidents? One black hole for stupid script writing. The whole quick cut bad fight choreography thing. One black hole. The victims were pretty much undeserving of death in any way. One black hole. Total: ten black holes.
So four black holes. I don’t know. If you like Jason Stratham go see it. If you like Robert DiNero don’t go see it. It had some entertainment value. Just not a ton of it.
By the way, I’d like to tangent off a little and talk about something related to this movie but more related to nerd dating and my current lack of success in it. In this movie Jason Stratham enjoys an awkward and stilted love interest with a hot girl (Yvonne Strahovski). I think a lot of that ended up on the cutting room floor, but I noticed that during the course of this film Jason never ever seems to say more than five words to her at a time. There is no easy banter, no sharing of feeling, none of the crap that women claim to want from a relationship. I thought back to every other Jason Stratham film I have ever seen and realized that he pretty much does the same thing in all of them. I guess if you’re good looking enough you don’t need to do any of that pesky personality and relationship stuff, and if you aren’t all the being witty, caring, funny, interesting, having a cool t-shirt selling website, and writing a detailed and well thought out movie review blog means diddly. Women, you can collectively bite me. Not that I’m bitter.
Meh. I’ll feel better tomorrow and probably apologize. Don’t listen too much to me when I am like this. Speaking of bitter, I’m off to see Abduction and expect it to suck like the world’s biggest vacuum cleaner. Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Talk to you soon.
Dave
Moneyball movie review
Pretty much on the money.
It is a conundrum of my life that I find baseball painfully boring to watch or participate in, but for some reason love baseball movies. Eight Men Out, Major League, the Bad News Bears; they all have a freakish fascination for me. I especially love movies where the team in question is a come from behind underdog. There is just something weirdly fascinating about it for me.
So, Moneyball. I liked it. Fun, interesting, and basically shot around Oakland, the town I have lived in for the last ten years. There is a special thrill when you see a scene shot in the parking lot where one of your friends puked his guts out after getting blackout drunk. You somehow feel closer to the movies.
It is the story of the Oakland A’s, known as the poorest team in professional baseball. One of my favorite actors, Brad Pitt, plays Billy Beane, the Oakland general manager as he struggles to put together a winning team on a budget. The problem is all his best players recently got hired away by other, richer teams and he is left with the dregs. While trying to negotiate a player trade he meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill, the fat kid from Superbad. He was also in Knocked Up and had a voice over roll in one of my personal favorites, Megamind), a recent Yale graduate with a degree in economics. Turns out young Peter has been looking at baseball players from a statistical analysis point of view, and Billy hires him to help put together a budget team that can win. Peter goes through the dregs of players, looking for ones that can get on base and actually score. They put together a team that, while lacking any major stars that dazzle, manages to deliver a solid performance and set a record breaking winning streak. I won’t spoil the story by telling you how it ends, although if you are familiar with the Oakland A’s you probably already know. (Baseball jersey t shirt image from Eastbound and Down courtesy of the TV show t shirt category)
There are some subplots tied into the team manager having issues with how Billy is putting together his team, Billy’s twelve year old daughter, and a bunch of flashbacks to his own youthful baseball career that honestly seemed a little forced in and pointless. We got some good character development from Billy and his daughter. The flashbacks didn’t seem to add a lot.
The stars. Baseball movie. One star. Brad Pitt. One star. Great performances all around. One star. They didn’t feel compelled to lower the story to the lowest common denominator and crowbar in a stupid hot girl to be some kind of love interest or team intern or whatever. One star. There was a definitive story arc for Billy and you can really see his character develop. One star. The analysis they did made a lot of sense, and nothing seemed weird or out of place. One star. They gave us a nice look into the inner workings of major league baseball and how the whole team development works. One star. Billy’s daughter didn’t annoy. One star. Set in Oakland and about our local team. One star. As far as I know they kept to the actual story. One star. The managed to avoid a dumb Hollywood ending. One more star for an overall good movie experience. Total: twelve stars.
The black holes. Pacing seemed sluggish at times. There were times when I found myself bored as we watched yet another video of some forgotten baseball player with a hidden talent and Peter telling Billy why he was worth looking at. The editing could have been tightened up some. One black hole. There were a couple sub plots that didn’t need to be in the movie, including the whole Billy flashback sequence. Also there was one scene where we meet Billy’s ex wife and her hippy dippy husband that went no where. One black hole. Brad Pitt and about 80% of the cast spent the whole movie dipping, a habit I find uber disgusting. Seriously, it turns my stomach, like a giant pus and maggot hoagie. I know it’s a baseball thing, but it really threw me off the whole time. One black hole. Weirdly enough, in spite of my actual dislike of watching baseball, I feel this movie would have benefited from some more actual baseball footage. A lot of time spent indoors. One black hole. Total: four black holes.
So a grand total of eight stars, a great score for a great movie. Try to see it in a theater, if you can, although there would be nothing wrong with seeing it on your TV. It will work in both venues. Decent date movie too, as there is a lot of humor and heartwarming scenes, particularity with Billy and his daughter.
Killer Elite review tomorrow. I saw it tonight and will write it up in the morning. Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu. Talk to you soon.
Dave
