What I'm Currently Obsessed With (June 2011)

School has absolutely demolished my blogging rate lately. I currently have 4 weeks left and expect to do some serious movie reviews when I have some free time. I’ve been dominating my movie list this year- though my free time has been sparse, I’d rather relax on my couch or in bed and watch a 2 hour movie then plug away at a video game or book- Video games are not appealing to me right now because I have no satisfaction in completing them. I haven’t even completed Portal 2 yet. And books, well I’ve read more business cases and books in the last 6 months than my prior 6 years.... So movies have satisfied a happy medium right now...

Here is the progress on my top 20 anticipated movies of 2011.

1. Tree of Life

2. Super (Review Soon)

3. Super 8

4. X-Men: First Class

5. Extraterrestre

6. Stake Land

7. Hobo With a Shotgun

8. Anonymous

9. Apollo 18

10. Carnage

11. Rubber

12. Knights of Badassdom

13. Piranha 3DD

14. Conan the Barbarian

15. Cowboys & Aliens

16. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

17. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

18. Immortals

19. Captain America: The First Avenger

20. Thor

Cross two more off my list, X-Men and Thor. I also watched the Hangover 2, the new Pirates, Battle: Los Angeles and Kung Fu Panda 2. I’ve seen 79 movies in the first half of the year, destroying my 2010 pace!! I have short reviews written on some of these movies but this post isn’t about them. It’s about a movie I saw for the first time yesterday, a movie that broke into my top 10 of all time. Just to show you how prestige that list is… my top 10 movies of all time are:

10. Star Wars Return of the Jedi (1983, Richard Marquand)

9. A Bridge On the River Kwai (1957, David Lean)

8. 12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet)

7. Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino,)

6. Mulholland Dr (1991, David Lynch)

5. Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa,)

4. M (1931, Fritz Lang)

3. The Shawshank Redemption (1994, Frank Darabont)

2. 2001: A Space Oddesy (1968, Stanley Kubrick)

1. Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)

0. Inception (2010, Chris Nolan)*

It appears 1954, 1957 and 1994 were good years representing 60% of my top 10 list. Inception is listed at number 0 because I haven’t quite got over the honeymoon of just how extraordinary that movie is- not just from a masterpiece of directing standpoint, but how an overly complex ORIGINAL screenplay can be so emotional, entertaining and fun to dissect.

I’ll stop dragging it out and announce that Once Upon a Time in the West has made it into my top 10. I will admit that my knowledge in westerns is very limited, having only seen Leone’s big four, Unforgivin and both True Grits… but Once Upon a Time in the West feels completely different from the movies I just listed. And it starts with the music. So what am I obsessed with? The Man with the Harmonica.

There is something so ominous about this music, it makes my bones chill, raises the hairs on the back of the my neck, goosebumps appear on my arms. I’ve listened to it so many times today that I discovered SiriusXM’s channel Chill, plays a remix version by Apollo 440. I love them equally. Hope you enjoy them.

Most Anticipated Movies of 2011

Usually you do these kinds of lists in January or December of the previous year. I’m late, but luckily there hasn’t been much released in the first quarter of the year that I was interested in. So here’s my top 20 anticipated movie list for 2011. I’m getting this idea from my boy MadMan.

1. Tree of Life

2. Super (Review Soon)

3. Super 8

4. X-Men: First Class

5. Extraterrestre

6. Stake Land

7. Hobo With a Shotgun

8. Anonymous

9. Apollo 18

10. Carnage

11. Rubber

12. Knights of Badassdom

13. Piranha 3DD

14. Conan the Barbarian

15. Cowboys & Aliens

16. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

17. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

18. Immortals

19. Captain America: The First Avenger

20. Thor

Intentionally left off the list: The Hangover Part II and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Two movies that will no doubt be completely underwhelming compared to their predecessors. So it’s hard to anticipate something where there’s a high probability of disappointing me. Throw Transformers; Dark of the Moon on there too.

Tree of Life: Ever since the movie was first announced to be in production back in 2008. We finally have a trailer to go with the title, so it appears to be finally getting released.

Super 8: Creator of Lost J. J. Abram’s new movie, produced by Steven Spielberg will definitely generate some hype this summer. Abrams always delivers exceptional teasers to his work to draw in interest and it’s hard to turn away from this fantastic trailer.

X-Men: First Class: A brand new trailer this week peaked my interest for this movie, ignoring the terrible one-sheets. My prediction, this comic book movie will be the best of the pack; better than Captain America, Thor and The Green Latern which I didn’t even put on my list. The CGI and setup just looks so terrible.

Extraterrestre: It’s high my list because of the lack of information I have for it. But it’s essentially Cloverfield… with aliens.

Stake Land: Yeh Yeh it’s another zombie movie… but watch this trailer and tell me this doesn’t interest you a tiny bit.

Anonymous: Disaster film expert, Roland Emmerich (2012, Independence Day, The Day After a Tomorrow) has taken on a script that has nothing to do with the destruction of American cities. The plot? What if William Shakespeare, didn’t write the plays and sonnets he’s known for.

Apollo 18: A movie that depicts events about a moon mission, that ended up being canceled, or at least that’s what the public was told. Trailer here.

Cowboys & Aliens: Director of Iron Man, John Favreau’s adaptation of a comic book based on a western setting that gets invaded by aliens. The footage has been described as Unforgiven meets Independence Day. The trailers look action packed, but how long into the movie will it really stray from a gritty

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol: The last Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise. In this movie, it’s rumored that Jeremy Renner will be taking over the reigns as the new MI agent and Cruise (Ethan Hunt) will be training him for future movies in the franchise.

The rest of the blockbusters are clumped together at the bottom of my list because I just don’t expect them to be great movies. Thor and Captain America will be mediocre “starting films” for the Avengers movie that started filming this week, but I question how interesting these movies will be. Captain America is over Thor because Hugo Weaving is playing Red Skull… which just sounds badass. Can’t wait to see him in the skull.

REVIEW: Hobo With a Shotgun (Jason Eisener, 2011)

I am all for “camp” in movies. Drag Me to Hell, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness pull off some of the best genre specific camp in cinematic history. It worked well because Sam Raimi understands how to immerse the audience with drama, create tension and finish scenes with a combination of humor and stylized hommage. Even the Spider-man trilogy has plenty of instances where Raimi can create campy situations out of a relatively serious synopsis. I enjoy tongue-in-cheek movies that strive to deliver exactly what is advertised, but Hobo With A Shotgun’s attempt at humor falls apart as the audience realizes the camp feels more like cheese.

Hobo vs Slick

Hobo With a Shotgun takes place in a decrepit city with a crime presence worse than Robocop, Batman Begins and Predator 2 combined. A nameless Hobo (Rutger Hauer, who’s also in Batman Begins) walks the streets, dreaming of buying a lawnmower and constantly witnesses excessive violence, police corruption, prostitution and drug dealing. People live their lives in fear of a crime boss named Drake (Brian Downey) and his two sons Slick (Gregory Smith) and Ivan (Nick Bateman). After witnessing Drake and his boys decapitate a man and stick the head on their front of their truck in the first minutes of the movie, Hobo becomes aware of just how bad things are. He later saves a prostitute Abby (Molly Dunsworth) from Slick’s attempt at rape but in the process gets assaulted by Slick and thrown out in the street to be left for dead. Abby takes in the Hobo after his act of kindness and rests him back to health.

A victim of the crime boss - decapitation by barbwire attached to a truck

Hobo is about to finally buy his lawnmower at a pawn shop when the shop gets held up by three robbers. Instead of spending the money on his dream, the Hobo reaches for a shotgun conveniently loaded and displayed right next to the lawnmower. The result is massive killing spree where the Hobo transforms into an justice wielding anti-hero, killing anyone associated with the waves of crime over the city. The news of the Hobo’s rampage reaches all media outlets (as if people still get their news on the street from TVs stacked together in a store window) and it is not long before the Hobo is infamously known.

Hobo with his shotgun

The gritty gratuitous violence doesn’t come close to looking realistic, so Hobo With a Shotgun won’t turn your stomach. It’s really hard to take scenes seriously that involve getting on a school bus with a flamethrower to burn children alive or sawing someone’s head off with a hack saw while they are screaming for help (and oh by the way…surviving). These scenes are of course over the top, but there is nothing holding them together from the rest of the movie. Most of the scenes look like they were shot and edited (thrown together) in a weekend.

It should be known that Hobo With a Shotgun was not an adaptation of another screenplay or book, but rather an adaptation of a fake trailer that was made specifically for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse. This may explain the choppy screenplay but doesn’t explain the poor excuse for dialog, especially the lines delivered by Bateman, who come off as a bad Stifler (Seann William Scott) clone. As mentioned, the attempts at humor fall flat in most instances, except for a few clever Newspaper Headlines: Hobo Stops Begging, Demands Change and Parents Smile as Bodies Pile.

Hobo mad

With a budget of $3,000,000 it’s hard to imagine the final product comes out as amateurish as it does. Hobo With a Shotgun is close to being unwatchable and to put this movie in perspective; barely beats out the level of film quality found in Uwe Boll’s films.

Grade: 46/100

REVIEW: Rubber (Quentin Dupieux, 2010)

If there has ever been a movie made for “no reason” it would be Quentin Dupieux’s Rubber. Simply put, the movie is about a tire (like the ones on your car) named Robert that goes on a murderous rampage after discovering he has telekinetic powers. From afar, an audience watches the bloodbath unfold through binoculars. This is the movie’s entire synopsis.

Robert rolling down the highway

It’s hard to rave about a film that takes its time like Rubber does but there are some interesting things going on. Robert has an infatuation with a girl he sees drive by in a Jeep, whom he cannot seem to go through with killing her. Instead Robert follows her to a small town where the havoc begins. Scenes unfold awkwardly with very little sense of motive until they finally end. Most of the events that take place, the audience will try to associate directly with the plot (of what little plot there is) or by the movie’s excessive representation of things happening for “no reason”. Once the audience gets past this theme, which will occur over and over and over again, Rubber feels dry. If only Quentin Dupieux could add dialog like Quentin Tarantino, Rubber would be worth multiple viewings.

The police are no match for Robert

Some of the highlights of Rubber include scenes with Stephen Spinella (Milk, 24) who plays a Lieutenant in charge of the murder investigations in the small town. Spinella pretends to break the 4^th wall in several instances, but he’s really just talking to the California audience. Spinella brings comic relief to the monotonous screenplay but he doesn’t appear enough to carry the load. What works and what drives me to be so interested in watching Rubber again is the questions left unanswered. If I listed them, they would ruin the movie, but they are so bizarre, so intentionally out there, even behind all the subtle jerks of “no reason” symbolism, I cannot wonder if Quentin wrote those scenes for a reason.

Spinella at a stakeout tracking Robert

At 85 minutes, Rubber should definitely be experienced at least once. If not to see a tire implode people’s heads but to see how Dupieux creates a parody out of his own movie, feeding the audience exactly what they want but leaving little satisfaction in the end. Did you see what I did there?

Robert walking away from a tire fire

Grade: 84/100

Side Notes:

1. If you wait until the movie ends, you will see the opening scene from another angle.

REVIEW: The Good, The Bad, The Weird (Jee-woon Kim, 2008)

Not to be confused with another western with a similar name, The Good, The Bad, The Weird a Korean film set in the 1930s desert wasteland Manchuria. Even though this movie was inspired by Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the two movies do not share themes, styles or motives even with the similar titles so please don’t consider GBW to be an adaptation. In fact, the screenplay is more original than most of what Hollywood puts out today. Hollywood should probably stop remaking movies, adapting screenplays and stealing European sitcoms and really try to pump out something interesting. [/small rant]

Park Chang-yi (the bad) and his gang

Park Chang-yi (the bad and a bandit hitman), is hired to retrieve a map from Japanese officials traveling by train. Before he can get there, Yoon Tae-goo (the weird and a thief) steals the map first. Before fighting it out against Chang-Yi’s gang, Park Do-won (the good and a bounty hunter) accidently helps Tae-goo escape. Tae-goo believes the map will lead him to a buried treasure and tries to keep the map a secret. But the Ghost Market gang overhears a conversation about the map and is now also interested in the treasure. Tae-goo now must avoid, Do-wan, who is tracking the map knowing it will lead to Chang-yi and reward money, Chang-Yi will stop at nothing to get the map for himself, the Ghost Market gang is equally persistent AND the Japanese forces want the map back in their possession.

Park Do-won (the good)

Director Jee-woon Kim does an excellent job balancing the pacing between action, comedy and downtime, with the exception of one overdrawn desert chase scene. The western spin is a nice change of pace from his darker films such as A Tale of Two Sisters and Three Extremes II. What stands out is Kim’s consistent use of Long Takes, which is particular hard to do in action movies due to a high margin of error and having to reset the entire scene if not shot perfectly.

Yoon Tae-goo (the weird) with his dueling pistols in a firefight with Park Chang-yi

Not only is The Good, The Bad, The Weird a change from Kim’s resume but also for Song Kang-ho (The Weird). More commonly known for his role in Thirst, Kang-ho shows both his action hero side mixed with his comedy persona. The use of comedy works well and is usually capped off with Kang-ho’s on screen charm. At 129 minutes the film might be a bit long but there is enough action and comedy to hold interest as well as a satisfying end to the story.

Park Do-won (the good) is approached by a bandit with a large mallet

Rating: 76/100

Side Notes:

1. Yoon Tae-goo (the weird) never reloads his dueling handguns once in the entire movie. He shoots his gun ~500 times.

What I'm Currently Obsessed With (Update)

These are the remaining guns I am trying to identify.

And here is the list of guns I believe I've correctly identified, from my previous entry. I still need help with #11.

1. Men In black (Noisy Cricket) (tiny gun top left)

2. 5th Element (most southern gun)

3. Hellboy (The Samaritan) (dead center magnum)

4. Aliens (Pulse Rifle) (large assault gun to the right)

5. Star Wars (Han Solo gun) (Dead center)

6. District 9 (werid looking huge gun in center)

7. Forbidden Planet (upside down at the muzzle)

8. Star Trek (upside down at the cock)

9. Blade Runner (double trigger gun)

10. Drudge Dredd (upside down by trigger)

11. Predator (Shoulder cannon?) ( Trigger?) or Minority Report (shotgun)

12. Stargate (staff at top)

13. Firefly/Serenity (Jane’s Vera gun) (top left big one)

14. Matrix (Agent Desert eagle) (top left)

15. Logan’s Run (muzzle)

16. Space 1999 (Far east weird gun)

17. Lost in Space (upside down above District 9 gun #6)

18. Battlestar Galactica (handle by trigger)

19. Babylon 5 (upside down under Hellboy gun #3)

20. Big Trouble in Little China (Uzi)

What I'm Currently Obsessed With (March 2011 Edition)

In a new segment I like to call, What I'm Currently Obsessed With, I will highlight the thing (Book, Movie, Video Game, Youtube Video, Song, Etc) that... I'm currently obsessed with. Even though it feels like I don't have time for anything anymore (except for that 1 hour time block from 11pm-12am every night where I watch Adult Swim) I still think I can still write about AT LEAST one obsession every month. Who knows, I might even have to make this a weekly bit.

Over at Blastr.com (which for anyone who doesn't know is an affiliation with the SyFy network) made a new posts about the French director Jean-Luc Godard's love for guns in sci-fi movies. So he created a cool picture that includes 26 of his favorite ray guns from various movies and TV shows. I've become infatuated with trying to guess all 26. I currently have 20.

I have been cropping out the guns that I have guessed correctly and later tonight I will post a shot of what I have left. Maybe someone can help me out. Until then, enjoy trying to figure them out.