Hey Gang, I'm thinking of changing the title of the blog from "Tales of an AngryVader" to something a little more applicable like "AngryVader's Smart Ass Movie Reviews", "AngryVader's Movie Rants" or "AngryVader's Movie Blah (maybe spell it "Blaugh)". I kind of like that last one. The whole "Tales of" thing came out of a time where I used to post more of my training and I thought I was going to post more about my personal life and dating experiences, but as my training doesn't change all that much and my dating life is pretty much non-existent, that's really not the direction this blog is going. This is pretty much a straight up movie blog at this point, don't you think?
I guess I could write more about my life and my training, but do you really want to hear about it? I dunno...
Suggestions are welcome, so let me know what you think.
Oh yeah, click on my Amazon link. The holidays are coming up. If you plan on buying stuff through Amazon, please click on my link to get you there and that's all you need to do. Use Amazon normally at that point. You don't pay anything extra and I'm supposed to get a kickback. Thanks!
Crazy, Stupid, Love
You can read the original review here.
This movie still kind of bums me out. It really missed out on being something interesting, but it just had too many threads going and it really blew it with the ending. I still want to see the Gosling/Carell buddy movie the trailer promised.
It's not a bad rental though. If you didn't see it in the theater, this is the type of movie that you'll likely enjoy more because probably had your expectactions lowered by now.
Beginners
Here's my original review.
This is still a strong rental recommendation. It's one of the better films I've seen this year and a well-told story. It's right on that cusp of being in my top ten lists, but likely getting edged out by movies I liked more.
Trespass
Here's a mess of a film starring Nicholas Cage and Nicole Kidman. I need to find a different word other than 'mess' to describe a movie. I guess it's my favorite term, but I need to mix it up a little. This isn't quite a 'disaster', so I'm going to stick with 'mess' this time. Anyway, Trespass is a 'bottle film' involving a home invasion, where a bunch of dudes invade Nic Cage's house to steal diamonds and money. The problem is that you're watching it and you don't care about anything that's going on. There are too many 'twists' and misdirects. It's all over the place. Joel Schumacher slept-walked...I mean directed this mess. He's been in a steady decline for a while and I think it's time for him to retire.
Here's an example of how stupid this is. Nic Cage's character is a diamond dealer. Wanna know what the password was to his security system? I'll give you a guess: "Diamond". Are you effing serious? Was his safe combination "12345"? At least that would have been funny.
Don't watch this. Pass.
Tabloid
Crazy-ass story that had a little bit of everything. There's kidnapping, sex, bondgage, religion, dog attacks and dog CLONING! Sounds like a weird sci-fi story right? Nope, this is a frigging documentary. You'll watch this and still not believe it's true.
I thought this was interesting and worth the watch.
Water for Elephants
It certainly looks nice and I didn't think it was uninteresting, but it's just kind of 'meh' in any of the scenes that don't involve the Elephant. I did like how despite they have a circus full of wild animals, Christoph Waltz's character is the wildest of them all.
The Elephant is the best part of the movie though. There no chemistry at all between Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon. I did like Witherspoon, but maybe they should have gone with someone a bit younger to work with Pattinson. I don't want to hate on Pattinson, but I don't think he was good here. He seems to have issues with making eye contact and I'm just not sure he's all that good of an actor. Let's see what happens once this Twilight thing passes.
It's not the worse thing you can rent. It's a little long, but you can kind of skip past parts and still get the general idea.
An Invisible Sign
Jessica Alba basically plays an insane person that makes herself OCD, because of her Dad. Okay I'm oversimplifying. This is pretty bad though. The story just doesn't many any real sense, and the conclusion of this film did not feel earned based on what had happened.
If this was an attempt by Alba to break out, then she needs to pick better movies. Her performance seems like that of a newcomer, not someone that you've been aware of for the better part of a decade. It's a shame because this could have been a halfway decent movie if written and directed better.. Instead it's just a bunch of poorly formed ideas and characters.
Pass
Arena
Imagine someone making a worse version of Gamer starring Samuel L Jackon and master thespian Kellan Lutz and this is what you get. Seriously, it's worse than Gamer. What the hell kind of name is Kellan Lutz anyway? It sounds like a name you'd make up when drunk and giving to a cop to avoid a citation. Or something you pick up at the store, "Hey Honey, I'm going to go down to Lowe's and pick up a Kellan Lutz. I should only about about 40 minutes."
Kellan Lutz is going to be in Immortals next weekend. I hope Immortals breaks the trend, because if you look at his Rotten Tomatoes, he's yet to star in a single movie out of 17 that has a positive rating. That's not a very good track record. Admittedly, that's not all his fault. He is in the Twilight saga after all.
I'd like to take it easy on him this time, but he's just not an actor. He growls and grunts through the movie and I would bet that's the upper limit on this guy's range. This is an absolute disaster of a movie. You should generally not expect much when watching a direct-to-video movie, but this was amazingly bad. The first 30 minutes of this movie are so stupid I can't believe anyone watched this at any point during the process and didn't say, 'Hey guys, we should probably have this, you know, make sense.'. I'd critize the writing, but that would imply this was written by anyone (Tony Giglio), nor does this movie seem like it was directly by anyone (Jonah Loop).
Pass
Green Lantern - Extended Cut
I finally watched the Extended Cut of Green Lantern, and I can't say it's all that much better. You get a longer opening sequence about Hal Jordan's youth and Father, but it still doesn't address the myriad of issues with this movie. As I feared, the deleted scenes on the disc were not integrated back into the movie. Big mistake there.
It's still just a rental at best.
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