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Trouble with the Curve (2012)
Mehtastic
Clint Eastwood turns in another performance of being an angry old man.
Baseball is reduced to a competition between dudes behind computer screens and old scouts who can't see.
I think you're supposed to care about Amy Adams and Clint's relationship as father/daughter but you probably won't.
All in all its not a terrible movie, but it tries really hard to be a good movie and its not.
Oh, Justin Timberlake plays a completely unconvincing ex-prospect turned scout who actually wants to be a play by play announcer.
If you love baseball as life movies, you might enjoy this. Otherwise I'd suggest skipping it as there are much better ways to spend a couple of hours.
Ragamuffin (2014)
I really wanted to like this
I wanted to like this a lot. I heard it wasn't your typical "Christian" film. I grew up loving Rich Mullins and was lucky enough to get to see him in concert in my early teens.
His music and life had a profound effect on me, leading me to finding Brennan Manning's book and well, just showing me that life isn't as simple as church often makes it.
The problem with this movie is its just not very well done. The acting is mediocre at best, the writing is as well.
Some things are set in the correct time period and others they just appear to shrug and say "oh well" and don't worry they aren't.
The movie also does a pretty terrible job at flowing. We get a glimpse of Rich as a kid, it was rough, his dad was a hard man, and then, he's smoking, and then he's off at Bible college, and then he's in Zion. Stuff happens, and you sort of see how they're connected, but they don't flow into each other.
I really wish this movie had been a real documentary instead of poorly made docu-drama.
Rich Mullins is an inspirational figure who shared his genius and God's love with the world while battling extremely human flaws. He didn't hide from them, and fortunately the movie doesn't flinch from them, but neither does the movie do a proper service to the man and his work.
Non-Stop (2014)
Mediocre at best, but could be far worse.
When I first saw the trailers for Non-stop I thought "Oh god, that looks awful." Unfortunately my wife decided to get it through netflix and I must say, its not awful. Its certainly not good, but its not awful.
For most of its length the movie is a decent suspense thriller. Its not a great one, but once you shut your mind off to the plot details, you can get into the "who's doing it?" "How are they going to get away with it?" aspects.
Unfortunately with about 20 minutes or so to go the movie completely gives up any pretense of being decent. I won't give you any spoilers, but it goes from mediocre to just plain dumb. I mean, seriously, it lost a star just for that, it would have been a slightly more mediocre 6.
Liam Neeson does a good job of the role he's sort of slouched into, being angry punching people.
Julianne Moore was completely wasted. I have no idea why she was in this movie except to put another "star" in it? Totally under utilized and her character is, well it just feels like it was written in to give room to another name.
The best aspect of this movie is the director realized he didn't have 2 hours worth of material. He didn't even have the 1:46 of material, but still, in this day and age of every horrible film feeling like it needs to be 2 hours + having a mediocre movie clock in at 1:46 is a breath of fresh air. Another 15 minutes would have been painful. Honestly I think so many Hollywood films I've hated lately would benefit from just being 90-105 minutes long instead of 120-150 minutes long, but that strays from this already rambling review.
47 Ronin (2013)
Not even Fun Bad
I'm not quite sure why I didn't give this movie even lower a rating. Possibly because you might think I'm hating on it for no reason, but seriously, I'm not, its that bad.
When I saw the previews to this movie I immediately though "Oh, its 300, just set in Japan, with Keanu Reeves." due to some giant samurai in shiny armor and some weird looking guy Reeves is battling. But, while 300 is action packed, this movie is not. It'd be one thing if the story was decent and could carry you through to when the action happens, but it doesn't.
This movie isn't even fun-bad where you shut your brain off and just enjoy the silly because its not silly. Its boring punctuated by brief moments of action. And not that interesting of action either.
Imagine Michael Bay directed a movie with an effects budget of 1 million dollars. Then imagine he gave up after a week and left his grad student aide to finish the movie with a script written by a junkie male escort.
That's kinda what this movie is.
It takes a classic story, "Woman loves man she can't have. Honor gets in the way. Betrayal happens. Honor must be restored through violence." and makes it unbelievably boring.
Seriously, its trying so hard to be "Seven Samurai*" but with awful direction, bad acting and a terrible script.
So, maybe the action saves the movie. No, it doesn't. The movie drags on and on and relatively little action for how many swords are shown. Apparently at the end there is a bunch of fighting but I'd fallen asleep by that point because the movie was so badly done.
Well, at least the effects are OK?
Nope, they look worse than 1999's the Matrix. Seriously, if you're going to have two really important scenes feature a CGI character, don't make it look like you lifted it from Morrowind.
This movie had a ton of potential to be a fun revenge action movie. Instead its ruined by a plodding plot, awful direction, and again Keanu Reeves is the BEST actor. Wooden does not begin to describe it.
Terrible.
*I don't mean its attempting to be 7 Samurai in its plot, but it is attempting to emulate classic samurai films and failing terribly.
We're the Millers (2013)
What kind of comedy is this supposed to be?
I'm fairly picky when it comes to comedies so I didn't expect much from this one. In a way I was left more disappointed because I feel it has real potential that was squandered.
The movie seems a bit schizophrenic in its style of comedy. Is it supposed to be a black comedy? A "feel good" comedy? A buddy/group comedy?
It can't ever figure it out and sort of hops between styles never getting a real fit.
Most of the funny moments are of the "HAH" variety and over very quickly and then you're stuck waiting 5 to 10 minutes for the next brief "HAH" moment.
It does have a classic scene that is hilarious and while it doesn't save the movie, its amazing and you'll know which one it is when you see it.
The movie feels every bit of its hour and fifty minutes and I found the outtakes at the end to be as funny as the whole of the movie put together.
Its just simply not my thing and I partially feel that way because I think it could have been an excellent dark comedy. The premise is great, it just seemed wasted.
One Missed Call (2008)
Not even really fun-bad
I have not seen the original this was based off and I've heard its actually good.
Do not mistake this film for good.
The premise- You get a voice message from the future and that's when you die. (Yeah, you read that correctly...)
So, the premise is a bit weak, but hey, maybe it'll be decently written, or acted, or directed?
Not really. Stock B (or C) level horror folk populate the movie and you don't ever really grow to care about any of them. Edward Burns character doesn't really seem to have a personality either even as he gets wrapped deeper into the nonsense going on around him.
The director feels the need to show a cell phone in almost every shot, as if the cellphone itself is what's terrifying. The cellphone is not, the call itself is as you're going to die whether or not you got around to listening to the voice message.
The movie is pretty boring but the last 20 minute or so switch from boring to bizarre. As in "WTF is going on? This makes no sense." It starts to make sense, and then no, it doesn't make sense anymore.
If you're really bored and desperate looking for a horror movie, this exists, but I can't recommend wasting any time on it.
White House Down (2013)
What's happened to action movies?
So, when did Hollywood decide to start producing action movies over 2hrs long with 90 minutes of plot? Anyone else notice that trend lately?
White House Down is ripped straight from the Die Hard mold. It even does a decent Die Hard impression for the first 40-45 minutes. Then, the plot begins to bog down, the one liners slow, the action fades away and we get to "the story."
Which frankly is terrible.
The good- Some decent action moments and laughable one liners.
The bad- Almost everything else. The movie is 40 minutes too long. Every good guy in power is struck with stupidity, every good guy not Channing Tatum can't hit the broad side of a barn, while every bad guy can, unless he's shooting at Channing Tatum.
The hilarious misuse of military hardware actually gets entertaining after a bit (ICBMs as SAMs? why not!).
But overall the plot is so over the top and so poorly unveiled you just don't care and pray for the thing to end.
The CGI is also not overly impressive for a $150 million feature. Its better than SyFy channel, but not on par with what I'd expect for a movie of this size. Possibly its also because I've become tired of the overuse of CGI when its not needed so it catches my eye more often.
As action movies go this isn't horrible. But its painfully overlong to the point of you just don't care by the end. You mostly just want it to be done.
Rented from redbox and don't feel like I totally wasted $1.20, but I would rather have watched it for free on Netflix instant if it was there.
Only God Forgives (2013)
Drive 2- This time there's no car.
Take all the weird boring staring scenes in Drive.
Change the color scheme to blacks, reds, purples.
Throw in random scenes of gratuitous violence.
Strip away almost all dialog and the car.
Done all that? You have Only God Forgives.
Now, does this movie have no positives? Nope, its has some. A really cool score, some interesting camera angles and cinematography, and....ummm. OK, its got those things going for it.
Otherwise, its awful. I mean, bored to tears, WTF is the point of this movie awful. Its your typical "artsy" action movie which means next to no action, lots of long shots of nothing in particular, and over the top gore when it happens.
I know some people will like this movie. I can kind of see why, though I strongly disagree with their opinion. But if you watched this movie expecting anything like a "traditional" movie you're probably going to be disappointed.
It also doesn't help you have no reason to care about a single character in the movie. None, there is no character development, there is no connection to the characters, a very few things happen and then its over. And if you're like me, you're left not caring.
I gave it a 3 because the three aspects I liked were really good, but the rest of the movie is atrociously bad.
Mission: Impossible II (2000)
Stupefyingly Bad
This movie is one of the worst big budget action movies ever made. Notice, I'm not comparing this to "great" films, but to its fellow silly pointless fun action movies.
This one is truly terrible.
Like many action movies MI: II decided to rely on fancy new special effects instead of a plot that makes the slightest bit of sense. Now, an action movie's plot doesn't have to make any sense, but it'd better be damn enjoyable.
Seeing people pull off their uber-realistic "mask" once, was awesome. By the 40th time (Ok, I don't remember how many times but it was far too many and was just a pathetic gimmick because the writers sucked)it is no longer cool, just stupid. Especially stupid since a mask doesn't magically make 5' something Tom Cruise over 6' tall. Apparently you never noticed your boss was so much shorter than you...
Now, a bad plot, overdone special effects, that's not the worst thing ever. No, Mr. Woo saves that for the end.
*****************SPOILER ALERT********************
There will be spoilers here. And possibly some sarcastic comments. You can avoid both if you like and stop now.
Mr. John Woo, the "abuse of slow motion makes every movie better" master really takes things over the top in the final hours, er, minutes of the film. Cruise and the bad guy roar at each other on motorcycles, both slamming on their front brakes simultaneously to launch themselves through the air at one another.
Their bodies crash together and they fall to the ground. With shattered ribs? Any injury at all? Nope...well, OK, its an action movie, but really?
Then, a slow motion brawl on a sandy beach goes on...and on...and on. You see them fighting...and water and who is going to win? How can fists win a battle that physics could not?
WAIT!
What is this?
A large rock on this sandy beach?
SALVATION!
Thank you perfectly sized rock on sandy beach to be there so Mr. Cruise can bash the dude's head in.
This movie sucks.
The Relic (1997)
Seen it once...
I remember seeing this movie in the theaters when I was 17 and enjoying it. I saw it was on Netflix instant and gave it a whirl...
I'm not going to rip into this movie because it was full of clichés, its a monster movie for goodness sake. As far as the "ancient idol/horrible monster/kill everyone around" genre goes, its not bad at all.
I enjoy Tom Sizemore as an actor and while the script was what one would expect of 4 credited (and lord knows how many uncredited) screenwriters, I felt he did a good job as his character. Honestly for a movie of this type, the acting was just fine. They weren't required to do much, but that was OK.
However, if you watch this movie, get used to entire scenes where you have no idea what is happening because its so dark. I understand, keep the settings dim to create fear (and realism, the power is out most of the time though why everyone in the museum works in near total darkness 99% of the time is a bit mind-boggling) but I can't be scared if I can't see what's happening when I'm supposed to!
Dark, extremely dark shots keep the viewer in the (I can't do it), keep the viewer confused in many scenes. It was bad enough that a moderate length movie (109m) seemed MUCH longer and not in a good way.
Much like gimmicky camera tricks or abuse of slow-motion (I'm looking at you John Woo) can ruin a movie, the overly dark nature of so many shots just leaves you sitting there wish you could tell what the hell was going on.
I will say, possibly watching it on a larger screen, or a better quality television (mine is a 32" Sony LCD, nothing fancy) might mitigate lighting issues a bit, I don't know.
Overall, its an OK movie for the genre that is partially ruined by not being able to tell what the hell is going on.