The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene, Rachelle Lefèvre, Billy Burke, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone

Director: Chris Weitz

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Rating: D

Remember how I didn't like Twilight?  Somehow, the followup to it, The Twilight Saga: New Moon (because evidently the viewing public is incapable of determining that something is a sequel to another movie unless there's words that are the same) succeeds in making Twilight look good.

The run down: Edward (Pattinson) and Bella (Stewart) are living happily ever after, minus the whole her whining about being human and him refusing to turn her into a vampire because, really, why would you take the advice of the guy who tried to kill you in the last movie? Bella is particularly whiney about the issue because she's turning eighteen, which is one year older than her eternal lover, except not really.  At a party for her at his family's house, however, her mortality becomes all too aparent when she gets a papercut, causing a blood frenzy, that is only made worse when Edward throws her into a wall.  So Edward decides to break up with her and leave, taking his entire family with him and putting Bella into a depression that lasts forever.  Then she reconnects with Jacob (Lautner) and begins to seek out danger and adventure - all in a way to get glimpses of the Edward inside her head.  Something's wrong with Jacob and his tribe however, and it's only a matter of time before Bella comes out of her depression long enough to figure it out.  Also featured are the Volturi, the rulers of the vampire world, each of whom has great power.  Their leader is Aro (Sheen), and he is joined by Marcus (Christopher Heyerdahl) and Caius (Jamie Campbell Bower).  Their guards include Jane (Fanning) and her brother Alec (Cameron Bright).  Oh, and Victoria (Lefèvre) is back for revenge.

I hate the premise of this movie.  I realize that instantly makes me biased, but I hate it.  I hate that Bella is all whiny about being made into a vampire - honestly, I think I prefer vampire/human romances where the human doesn't want to be a vampire, or at least thinks about the consequences of becoming one a bit more, and isn't just all "I don't want to look older than you".  I hate that no one seems to want to point out the fact that it was James (Cam Gigandet) who gave her this idea in the first place.  Since when is taking advice from the bad guy a good idea?  I actually kind of liked that Jasper (Rathbone) goes into a blood frenzy when Bella gets a papercut as it makes sense in this world - it's kind of lame overall, but I like it - although I do question Edward's protectiveness.  Seriously, throwing her into a bookshelf is not going to help the situation.  Don't want your human girlfriend to be eaten by your vampire family? Don't throw her into a bookshelf.

What I hate most of all, however, is Bella's reaction to the breakup.  She literally goes into a depression for months on end following Edward leaving her.  I get the whole post-relationship depression, but she takes it to an extreme.  Granted, she had already basically given up her life for Edward before hand, so she didn't really have one to cling on to after he was gone... Yeah. Did not like it.  I also don't like Edward's behaviour overall.  First of all, he really seems to encourage her in her complete abandonment of her friends - something that becomes more pronounced as the series continues and the issues with Jacob become more pronounced.   I'm not saying that I disagree with Edward's feelings towards Jacob, I'm saying I don't like Edward's treatment of Bella's other friends, or Bella's treatment of them either.  As for Jacob... fuck, Jacob needs to grow up.  I get that he's a kid, and the youngest of the characters too, but his feelings and what not get annoying really fast.  There is a point when your attempts to hit on your best friend turn from heavy flirting to sexual harassment.  Remember boys, if she says "no" she's not meaning "try harder."

Zardoz (1974)

Starring: Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling, Sara Kestelman

Director: John Boorman

Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Rating: D

"The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was, but the gun shoots death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth ... and kill!"

Thus begins the classic cult film Zardoz.  In the year 2293 the Earth is inhabited primarily by a people called the Brutals, who are ruled without realizing it by the Eternals.  As the names might suggest, the Brutals live a life of brutality while the Eternals lived a life of ease - a life that lasted forever.  The Brutals, however, don't actually know about the Eternals.  Instead, they are more directly ruled over by a class known as the Exterminators, who worship the god Zardoz.  Zardoz appears to them in the form of a giant flying, hollow stone head, where the Exterminators deposit grain in exchange for guns.Enter the Exterminator Zed (Connery) hides in the head of Zardoz, where he's brought to the Vortex - the community of the Eternals that is protected from the Brutals by an invisible force-field.  Here Zed meets two Eternals, Consuella (Rampling) and May (Kestelman), and begins to figure out this new world around him.

And the entire time, Sean Connery looks like this.  Except for when he's wearing a wedding dress.  I kid you not.  That bit is possibly the best moment of the entire film, Sean Connery running around the Vortex in a wedding dress.  The other costumes are rather quesitonable too... and when it comes down to it, all I can do is hope that I'm not alive to see the future inspired by 70s fashion.

The plot for this movie is laughable at best.   I spent most of it wondering just what the hell was going on, and even when I had it figured out I still wasn't sure.  The plot overall was a lot like the costume; it's weird, it's confusing, it's disturbing and distressing, and yet for some reason you can't seem to look away.  It's not really good... but I'm not too sure if it's really bad either.  Disturbing.  That's the word I'm going to go with.

A View to Kill (1985)

Starring: Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Tanya Roberts, Grace Jones, Robert Brown

Director: John Glen

Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Rating: D

Bond (Moore) is at it again, this time investigating something to do with microchips and atomic bombs and what not and it all really made absolutely no sense to me.  What I did follow, though, was the girl, Stacey Sutton (Roberts), who is the daughter of an oil tycoon whose company has been taken over by the villain, Max Zorin (Walken).  Definitely not my favourite Bond girl, but I did really like Walken as the villain.  I've found that it really doesn't matter what it's in, when Walken acts it's great.  He doesn't necessarily save the movie, but he does make it a bit easier to take.

What helps Walken is the overall stunts.  View's biggest problem is the plot is absurd and Moore is, at this point, becoming a bit old to play the character of Bond, and the overall gender of one of the villains (May Day, played by Grace Jones) makes it so that Bond can't comfortably kill her.  Where the film attempts to redeem itself is in the stunts, which are fun and pretty much what you expect from an 1980s era action film, and Walken is definitely a great villain worthy of a classic Bond film.  In the last few movies I've been a bit bored by the villains and annoyed by the fact that they all either seem to be a part of a government organization or just weird individuals who have too much money.  While Walken's Zorin isn't part of some greater organization like SPECTRE and has ties to the KGB we still at least get some idea of who he is and why he is that way.  Honestly, I didn't think I'd ever say it, but I kind of miss SPECTRE.

A couple notes.  With this film, we're saying good by to a few people.  The most obvious is, of course, Roger Moore, who retires as Bond after this film.  So far, I'd say he is my second favourite Bond, well above  George Lazenby, but far below Sean Connery.  The second goodbye is to Lois Maxwell who played Miss Moneypenny in the first fourteen Bond films.  One of the best parts about these movies is the dynamic between Moneypenny and Bond - the woman who's always present, often flirting, and yet never in Bond's bed.  A far more subtle leaving is Maud Adams, the only Bond girl to appear in three Bond films.  Adams was first seen in The Man in the Golden Gun then again in Octopussy, where she played Bond's love interest of the film, first Andrea Anders then Pussy Galore.  In View she only plays the role of an extra, but it's still significant if only because she's the only Bond girl to appear in three films.

The Words (2012)

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Olivia Wilde, Zoe Saldana, Jeremy Irons, Ben Barnes, Dennis Quaid

Director: Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal

Genre: Drama, Romance

Rating: D

If Inception had been about books instead of dreams then this would have been that movie.  Actually, no, that’s not entirely accurate.  If Inception had been about books and had been really, really bad then it would have been The Words.  This movie was really disappointing; sure Bradley Cooper can be a bit hit-or-miss in his movies and not really a dramatic actor, but I really liked the concept, I really like the idea of frame narration, and I really like the rest of the cast.  I seem to be falling into that form of disappointment a lot lately; interesting concept, primarily stellar cast, bad movie.

Much like how Inception is about a dream within a dream within a dream, The Words is about a story within a story within a story.  Clay Hammond (Quaid) is an author who’s just released his latest book, also titled The Words, and is at a book reading for it where he meets student and major fan Danielle (Wilde), who hits on him and presses for more information about the book.  Hammond’s The Words is a story about Rory Jansen (Cooper), a struggling writer who finds an unpublished manuscript that amazes him and, after his wife, Dora (Saldana), mistakes the manuscript for his own he decides to get it published under his name.  Then he meets the Old Man (Irons), who tells Rory the story of the Young Man (Barnes) who wrote and lost the manuscript.

The big problem with The Words is the fact that it’s unbelievably slow.  The Hammond element to it is completely unnecessary and adds very little – what it does add is supposed to bring an element of mystery to the film but really just convolutes and confuses things.  The real story lies within Rory and the Old Man, not Clay Hammond, and as such the Hammond parts really take away from the overall story.  The one good thing that the Hammond part adds to the overall movie is the title sequence, which I enjoyed (although, like the movie in general, I felt it went on a bit too long).  Actually, I’m going to take back a bit of my critique on the Hammond story; I did like what they were trying to do with it, I just disliked the way they handled it.  In short, I felt the same about that one story line as I did about the movie overall.

Between the three story lines The Words does a lot of set up for a payoff that never really comes.  I liked the end of the Young Man story line – I liked the Young Man story line all around – and understood what they were trying to do with the Hammond, even if I don’t feel that they really achieved it.  The end of the Rory line, however, was just disappointing and rather anticlimactic.  There was no payoff, or at least not enough of one to justify the build up.  What can I say… The Words was all foreplay and no orgasm.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

Starring: Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rufus Sewell, Marton Csokas
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Genre: Action, Fantasy, Horror
Rating: D

I think my favourite part about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was the fact that I was lucky enough to be able to see it for free. Actually, I think the only part of this movie that I enjoyed was the fact that I was lucky enough to be able to see it for free.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter follows the life of the 16th president of the United States, from the time of his mother's death to the night of his own assassination, nearly fifty years later.  Following his mother's murder Abe (Walker) takes it upon himself to avenger her; little does he realize that her murderer, Jack Barts (Csokas), was a vampire.  Once this news became apparent to him Lincoln is recruited to hunt vampires by Henry Sturgees (Cooper), a man who knows a lot about vampires and the rules for hunting them.  In the course of his vampire slaying, Abe realizes that Henry's way of hunting vampires isn't enough; he would be far better off taking the office of the President of the United States, where he can fight against the hordes of slave-owning, southern vampires that threaten the nation.

I don't know where to begin with this movie.  The special effects were over done.  I understand that the use of CGI and the like is deemed to be necessary in movies like this, and can add a lot to fantasy and science fiction based movies, but in Abraham Lincoln it was just too over the top.  The viewer shouldn't feel like something as simple as a man twirling an axe had to be CGI-ed.  He's just doing a variation of staff twirling, it's not that complicated.  The CGI in the fight scenes is also over the top; while I understand why it was necessary in some points, its over use gave the movie this really weird feel to it - almost like it was trying to be like a steam-punk, vampire based version of The Matrix - except, not as cool.  There were a few moments when the fights were awesome, but a lot of it was just... once again, it was too fake and fluffy.  Many of the action sequences could have been done without, in favour of actually explaining some of the story.

A major plot point to the film is the fact that the vampires, lead by leader Adam (Sewell), are taking over the south of the United States, making the American Civil War a fight for humanity as much as a fight against slavery.  In my opinion, this whole aspect of the plot was left largely undeveloped; instead the filmmakers decided to spend a lot of time having Abe fight CGI-ed vampires in the start of the film, do a quick montage to go 'oh, hey, here's a viable plot - and then have him fight some more CGI-ed vampires.  As such, the film really isn't evenly balanced and the villain isn't given his proper due - or any real explanation.  The acting itself isn't bad, and I especially liked Dominic Cooper, but the actors themselves aren't really supported by anything.  Possibly the worst part is the fact that some of the plot twists are made blatantly obvious in the start of the film, so that when they're revealed later on the viewer has to question just how slow Abe has to be in order to not have figured them out.  Oh, also, back on the CGI note, the eyes of the vampires are really disturbing; in my opinion, Sewell's eyes were possibly the freakiest part of the entire film.  This is definitely a movie that I would recommend avoiding; having now seen it, I'm even considering flat out avoiding the book as well.  In conclusion, I do have to say that I'm sorry for having recommended this movie on Friday.  Now I'm saying skip this movie.

The Perfect Man (2005)

Stars: Hilary Duff, Heather Locklear, Chris Noth, Mike O'Malley, Ben Feldman, Vanessa Lengies
Director: Mark Rosman
Genre: Comedy, Family, Romance
Rating: D

Is there such thing as a good Hilary Duff movie?  I’ve watched a good many of her movies and I usually enjoy them.  The acting’s not great and the story’s not great, but it’s fun and there’s usually good (albeit pop-y) music.  The Perfect Man, however doesn’t really meet those standards.  The acting isn’t good, the story isn’t good, it isn’t overly fun, and the music… the soundtrack has four Styx songs.  This should be a life lesson: if the soundtrack of a movie depends heavily on Styx don’t see it.  It’s probably not worth it.

Jean (Locklear) is pretty much a serial monogamous.  She enters into relationships with questionable men then, when things don’t work out, she picks up her life and moves.  While this semi-nomadic life appears to work for her, it does not work for her two daughters, Holly (Duff) and Zoe (Aria Wallace), who both long for stability.  Once settled in their newest home Holly devises a plan with new friend Amy (Lengies) to essentially trick her mother into staying.  Using the wisdom of Amy’s Uncle Ben (Noth) Holly creates a fictional admirer for her mother, so that they won’t enter into the usual pattern.  Hijinks ensue as Holly must work to keep her mother from meeting the real Ben and dissuade Jean from considering the many advances of co-worker and Styx fan, Lenny (O’Malley).  Throughout all of this, she also meets a cute boy (Feldman) who shows interest in her, and must deal with her feelings for him in competition with her fear of getting too attached to one place.  Oh, and she comes to determine that the real Ben is perfect for her mother, despite the fact that he appears to be engaged to another woman.

Even by the standards of your typical Hilary Duff movie, this is a pretty bad movie.  The plot is ludicrous and one has to question just how Holly is capable of keeping all her lies straight (there are a few moments when it really seems like if Jean was in any way intelligent she would be able to figure out that ‘Ben’ was fake).  You also have to question the believability of Locklear as a woman with the kind of dating history that she has.  I have no problem buying her as a serial monogamous or regularly in bad relationships.  She really seems more of the type to date the hot douche (in line with the kind of men that Locklear seems to date in reality) and not the bumbling idiot.  There’s also no real explanation for why some of the men that she dates are so horrible.  Yes, Lenny is a Styx fan and that’s questionable in itself, but despite the fact that he’s not really the brightest and doesn’t have the best taste he actually seems like he’s a pretty good guy.  In the land of a Duff movie, though, balding Styx fans are not respectable potential step-fathers.  Oh, also, as the film is set in… some part of New York where the accents are particularly horrendous, this movie also features Canadian actors with really bad fake New York accents.  Between the accents and the music, it is highly likely that this film might make your ears bleed.

Fifty Shades Darker

Author: E.L. James

Genre: Erotic Fiction

Rating: D

“You can still say no. You can always say no.”

I think the above quote is a big part of why I have a problem with the Fifty Shades series.  Throughout the first and second books love interest Christian Grey tells protagonist Anastasia Steele that she holds all the power in the relationship because, while he is the dominant, she has the power to say no at any time and he has to listen to her.  The problem, however, is that he never listens to her.  Time and time again, Ana attempts to assert herself and Christian’s response, if she’s lucky, is that he simply ignores her and does what he wants anyways – when she’s less lucky he tends to threaten her, and has actually physically punished her for her disobedience.  Ana’s reactions, however, are just as bad.  With the exception of the concluding incident of Grey – which is resolved very quickly in Darker – whenever she does actually get upset with Christian’s reaction it’s only momentarily.  It’s like she’s going “grr” every time her boyfriend is a controlling dick, but forgets about why she was upset in the first place as soon as she hits send on her email.

There is more of a plot to this novel than its predecessor.  That’s not to say that it’s a good plot, just that there is one.  If you remember, the original was focused on the set up of guy meets girl, girl falls for guy, guy has deep issues and is really kinky sexually, girl figures out how to deal until guy finally takes the spanking too far.  Darker picks up roughly where Grey leaves off; Ana is mourning the loss of the relationship and dealing with her now job, while Christian is being his usual controlling self and trying to find a way to order his way back into Ana’s good graces.  Once that’s achieved the plot then moves into threats towards Ana and Christian’s lives, as one of Christian’s former subs begins to stalk him.  When that’s resolved Christian goes missing in his helicopter, and when he’s saved it’s just in time for his birthday.  Hanging over all of this is Ana’s new job, the fact that just about every man she’s ever come into contact with is in love with Ana, the overall threat of Christian’s first sexual partner and now business partner, and whether or not Ana’s going to accept Christian’s proposal.  Because when you’ve only known someone for a total of five weeks and have never been in a real relationship before marriage is totally the best idea.

Let’s deal first with the plot issues, then with the relationship issues.  I actually liked the general plot of Christian being stalked by his deranged former sub.  The way its set up kind of says something about James’ feelings towards the actual dom/sub culture: her dom in this series is a deeply traumatized man with serious psychological issues, and the one true sub that she shows is outright insane.  The heroine, who is supposed to represent everything that is pure and innocent is really against the culture and, despite enjoying some aspects of it, very much refuses to be put into the position of sub.  I did feel that this plot was resolved too quickly, and as a result James had to throw in the whole Christian going missing storyline which was just a bit too over the top.  If your book is only about 300 pages long, you shouldn’t need to have two different major events in a very short period of time.  It seemed like this whole book covered about a week and a half of time, so it really seemed like on Wednesday Christian’s stalker tries to kill Ana, then on Friday Christian crashes his helicopter, but everything’s okay by Saturday.  I can see where she’s going with the helicopter incident, but in this book it largely felt unnecessary – either she should have focused more on the stalking plot and eliminated the crash, or developed the crash more and eliminated the stalker.

With that being said, let’s move on to the relationship stuff.  The reoccurring issue of these books seems to be that every man who Ana meets instantly wants her, and none of them are particularly subtle about this desire – nor are any of them capable of taking no for an answer.  In the first book this desire is presented through Ana’s interactions with her friend, José, and boss’ brother, Paul (I believe).  Paul comes off as little more than a persistent and annoying flirt, while José is supposed to be a grade A asshole because one night he got drunk and pushed his case a little too far.  He is the villain here, despite the fact that in the same incident Christian (who was sober) essentially stalked Ana (who was not sober) in order to find out where she was, took her to his hotel, and stripped her while she was passed out.  Forgive me if I find one of these incidents somewhat more troubling than the other.  In the second book there is still the threat of José, to the point that Christian is basically pissy every time her friend is mentioned, as well as the threat of Ethan, the brother of Ana’s best friend, and that of her new boss.  In the case of her new boss Christian essentially has psychic powers, predicting that the man is a scumbag and a threat to Ana before there has been any cause to believe as much.  While I do have to say that yes, the guy did prove to be a scumbag, I think Christian’s reaction pre-scumbaggery was totally over the top.   His girlfriend gets a job and when he’s not able to talk her into giving it up he decides to buy the company.  Then, when his girlfriend is given the opportunity to go on a work trip, he uses his new power to make it not happen.  The boss’ scumbaggery aside, this whole reaction is just completely over the top.  This is the twenty-first century.  It is not appropriate to try to dictate whether or not your girlfriend is allowed to work or go on work related trips.  Buying the company and changing the company rules so that she can’t go on the trip is just another way of throwing a hissy fit.  In a bit of a change of focus, throwing an actual hissy fit because your boyfriend has a continued business relationship with an ex is just as bad as him throwing a hissy fit because you have a continued friendship with a guy who obviously has a thing for you.  Either you need to stop being friends with the guy, or you need to suck it up and accept his friendship with the girl.

My final issue with this book is in regards to the whole proposal.  Christian displays serious mental issues in this book, issues that weren’t really developed in the first one.  The more the book develops the more it seems that he suffers from Bipolar disorder or even a split personality.  One second he’s amiable and fun, the next he’s enraged by the silliest little thing.  At one point when he thinks that Ana is going to leave him again he has a complete breakdown, reverting to a rather infantile state.  Yet, neither he nor Ana question whether or not Christian has a good mental state for marriage.  Further aggravating the situation is the fact that, with the exception of his former lovers, everyone in Christian’s life is all for this quickie marriage – including his therapist – because they believe that a stable relationship with Ana is good for him.  His therapist even goes so far as to basically compare dating Ana to therapy treatments.  None of them seem to question whether or not such a relationship is actually good for Ana.  As good as he might make her feel, and as good as the sex is, I do have to question just what James is saying by having her strong protagonist jump into marriage with someone who is very clearly mentally unbalanced.

The Green Hornet (2011)

Stars: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Christoph Waltz
Director: Michael Gondry
Genre: Action, Comedy, Crime
Rating: D

If I were to say just one thing about The Green Hornet it would be “don’t see this movie.”  That’s it, nothing more, review done.  Okay? No?

Seth Rogen plays Britt Reid, a spoiled rich manchild (which I guess is a step up from his usual working class, stoned manchild) who inherits a newspaper after his father’s death.  Reid also inherits Kato (Chou), a mechanic and martial artist.  The two have a bromantic bonding moment during which they determine that they both hated Reid’s father, decapitate a memorial statue for his father, and then decide to become crime fighting superheroes.  As superheroes they go up against Russian mobster Benjamin Chudnofksy (Waltz), because it’s always smart to go up against the Russian mob.  Oh, and Reid also decides to restore his father’s newspaper to its former glory and use it as a way to get the attention of the mob, so he hires Lenore Case (Diaz) to do something with it.  I’m not exactly sure what her role was, I just know that she ends up playing the love interest (surprise, surprise), to both Rogen and Chou as they begin to fight each other for her and over their respective roles in the crime fighting business.

If this sounds like an attempt to be like Batman or Iron Man, but appealing to a stoner crowd, then you would be right. Seth Rogen is very, very believable as a man child, be he spoiled rich or poor and stoned.  He is not exactly believable as a superhero, no matter how far on the vigilante side he might be.  I spent a lot of the movie wondering just why Chou put up with him, even when he wasn’t exactly putting up with him.  Likewise, I wondered why Diaz hadn’t sued him for sexual harassment.  In the end, though, I think it really says a lot about a movie when you’re rooting for the Russian mobsters to defeat the all-American (?) superhero. The big problem with Green Hornet, asides from the fact that it’s just plain bad, is that it’s trying to fit into a market that’s a bit saturated.  Superheroes are the big thing right now, but if you think about it they’re all really similar.  Both Batman and Iron Man are rich, very successful men who utilize their money to fight crime and have reputations as playboys.  Bruce Wayne’s entire cover is the fact that he appears to be little more than a playboy in public, masking the fact that he’s really a super smart, super talented vigilante.  The reason why it works is because he’s super smart and super talented.  Likewise, Tony Stark is a huge playboy (no mask there), but also super smart and super talented.  He’s also very witty and really doesn’t attempt to be any beyond the law, secret vigilante because he comes public with his secret identity fairly early on.  Britt Reid… is just a manchild with a lot of money.  He’s not super smart, he’s not super talented.  That falls on Chou.  Neither character is really strong enough to hold the movie on their own, nor do they really do so together.  It falls short of expectations of a superhero movie, which is why, in short I’m going to repeat my earlier statement: don’t see this movie.  Go watch Batman, Iron Man, or Pineapple Express.  Really, I think it says a lot when Seth Rogen works better as a vigilante hero in a stoner comedy than in an actual superhero movie.