This is it, the best of the best of the best

and the worst of the worst

Here we go

Top Ten of 2009

10 - Chocolate - The story of an autistic girl who kicks all sorts of ass.



9 - Ponyo - Reviewed on this site, go check it out



8 - Anvil: The story of Anvil - A documentary about a band spending it's entire career fighting to regain the fleeting moments of fame it had at the begining (Update: since the movie hit this year they've been getting a lot of support and have even played opener for AC/DC's most recent stadium tour, good for them. I can't think of a band that deserves it more) METAL ON METAL!!



7 - Observe and Report - The OTHER (and significantly BETTER) mall cop film of 2009. a must see if you missed it.



6 - UP! - Reviewed on this site, check it out. Also this movie has made me cry with every single viewing. Damn you Pixar for making such potent material.



5 - Star Trek - JJ Abrams reinvention of the series is the second best sc-fi movie of the year. It handles time travel better than any movie I've ever seen.



4 - Fantastic Mr. Fox - Reviewed here, check it out...it's FANTASTIC



3 - Moon - Isolation, insanity, depression...Who could ask for anything more?! Moon is my favorite science fiction film of the year and if you get the chance to see it you'll understand why. This is classic science fiction at it's best.



2 - Inglourious Basterds - read the review, ya basterd!



1 - District 9 - I have a friend who argues with me on the importance of this film. His biggest arguement is that the main character is "a wimp" as he so elegantly puts it. This does nothing but prove to me that he does not get the film and is obviously a product of 80's action films. District 9 was a breath of fresh air in a year of film rife with stagnant, putrid stench. I implore anyone who hasn't seen it to do so and to watch it with an open mind and an open heart. You can read my review on this site.



Honorable mentions: Funny People, The informant!, Zombieland, Tyson

Now on to the worst of the worst...
My Top Five Worst Films of 2009

5 - X-men origins: Wolverine - Up and coming filmmakers should look at this as what not to do with special FX.

4 - Armored - Reviewed here, go take a peek....I dare you!

3 - Land of the lost - oh Will Farrell how far have ye fallen and why'd you have to take Danny McBride with you.

2 - Paul Blart: mall cop - I probably should be allowed to put this on my list. I only made it five minutes in before shutting it off.

1 - Halloween 2 - I don't usually watch remakes and I try to avoid sequels to remakes, this is the only movie I've seen this year that managed to get less than one full star, Though managed to avoid the dreaded zero stars.

(Ed. Note: I feel this needs to be mentioned. I know I watched it after the fact, but Miss March completely deserves to be on this worst of the year list. So i'm adding it an a DIShonorable mention)

Every year there's one or two movies that just get way more credit than they deserve. Now it's my turn to knock it down a peg with my...

Most Overrated Film: The Hangover - This is a film that has few laughs and the ones they have are far between. Zach Galifinakis and Ed Helms carry this movie, I would have shut it off if not for them. The one guenuine laugh they got from me was during the end credits showing the pictures on the camera.
Honorable mention: I love you, man.

On the other end of the spectrum there are films that come out that don't get the credit they deserve. A prime example of this is 2008's Role Models, but this is 2009.

Most Underrated Film: Cold Prey - This foreign horror is well worth the watch. It didn't get much promotion here in the states, sadly.

Moe's Favorite character of 2009: Dug from UP! - Dug is a pleasure to watch and a joy to listen to, he's the epitome of adorable. You just want to pet him and take him home, because you love him.
Honorable mention: Hugo Stiglitz from Inglourious basterds

Moe's Favorite performance by an actor: this was a three way tie between Sam Rockwell, Christophe Waltz and Sharlto Copley (from Moon, Inglourious Basterds and District 9 respectively)

well that's it, There's 2009 in a nutshell.

Armored - Wore pretty thin

(I did a search on google for "armored" and found this picture of a fish, it's more interesting than the movie was)


The thing I love about writing reviews for really great movies is that you allow your passion to take over and the review writes itself. I’ve had situation where I’ll start writing and next thing I know it’s an hour and half later and I have this wonderful little review staring at me and I’m proud of myself. The flip side to this is the reviews I’m forced to write for terrible movies. They can actually be as easy as the goods ones when a fair amount of humor is involved in the process. Occasionally you get a movie that actually makes you mad to even think about it and that makes the writing of the review that much harder. You force yourself to write it despite the fact that it’s actually making you mad just in the process of writing. Take a guess what kind of movie armored is…..

I’m a fan of botched heist films, they have such potential to be hilarious or can go the other way and be gripping and filled to the brim with drama and antici……………pation. Armored fails on both these fronts, this is the story of a man who’s going to lose his house if he doesn’t come up with some money. The only thing different between armored and every other movie with the same story is that the man in question (in this case Ty Hackett played by Columbus Short) isn’t the person who has the plan to get the money. Enter Matt Dillon, whose character Mike’s relationship with Ty was never entirely explained. He’s a friend of Ty’s father and possibly even Ty’s godfather? They look about the same age so I’m not sure what the deal with them is.


(this is the pace of the film)

Mike, apparently inspired by one particularly unlikely urban legend about armored truck heists, gets the idea to rob their own trucks and hide the money till the heat blows over. This concept is so flimsy that if it were a bridge I wouldn’t risk putting a hamster on it. But as is apt to happen in these kind of movies, he had already convinced 4 other guys to do it and all he needs is Ty’s approval and it’s a go. After a visit from the child welfare office (which is hilariously misinterpreted by the younger brother jimmy “I kept telling her, you got a job, we don’t need no welfare!”) Ty is in for the job on one condition, no one gets hurt. So at this point in the review you should all know how the rest of the movie plays out. Sorry to tell you, you’re all probably 100% right.

The heist goes smoothly, they go to store the money and there’s a vagrant in the abandoned building they decided to use, they shoot him, this pisses off Ty who tries to save him, they kill the vagrant and all hell breaks loose. Ty locks himself in the truck, manages to attract the cops, cop gets shot and he somehow gets the cop into the truck. Ty eventually manages to contact help and the day is saved…seriously. Mix in some obligatory chase scenes add in a handful of the expected “twists” and just a touch of tacked on Hollywood happy ending and you’ve got yourself a direct to video release that somehow managed to hit the big screen. The biggest problem with this movie, aside from just about everything, is the best actors in the film (sans Matt Dillon) were grossly underused, This would have been the Direct to video event of the year for the people who like those (my usual movie going partner among them), but in the end all you get is the most predictable, generic film of the year. The only solace I have is that in a couple of months when it finally hits DVD, if someone asks me what I thought of armored, I can look them right in the face and say “what’s that?”

One Genuinely interesting part of the movie…out of five

P.S. How bad is it that I didn't even mention Jean Reno or Laurence Fishburne?

Next up: Invictus - a last minute blood replacement (get it, I made a rugby reference!)

Fantastic Mr. Fox - Dare I say it was fantastic?

There are three kinds of people in the world; those who love Wes Anderson, those who hate Wes Anderson and those who have no idea who Wes Anderson is. He’s one of those directors that seem to inspire a certain amount of loyalty in his fans; His fans will typically forgive his lesser films because they know something brilliant is always right around the corner. This was the case with the Darjeeling limited, a film that I enjoyed, but was easily his weakest film. Needless to say I am a fan of Wes Anderson’s work, in fact I don’t think he’s made a film yet that I haven’t at the very least enjoyed on some level. I remember back in the late 90’s watching bottle rocket for the first time (before I was the film junkie you see before you now) and thinking to myself “wow” and I’ve followed that man’s career since.

I want to gush about this film, I want to go on and on about how I loved everything about it, how I loved the cast and the story and the animation, but I’m going to say this first. I knew I must have had some cosmic connection to this film when it started with a limerick, taken from the book, but nonetheless…

Boggis and Bunce and Bean
One fat, one short, one lean
These horrible crooks, So different in looks
Were none the less equally mean.

That says it all right there, it was fate.

The story Begins with Mr. Fox and Mrs. Fox (george Clooney and Meryl Streep respectively) in the process of stealing squab from a local farm when Mr. Fox in his infinite curiosity springs a trap. Mrs. Fox declares that she’s pregnant, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The conversation leading up to the trap sets the tone for fox and wife’s relationship. Fox does what he wants while giving the impression that he’s giving you an option, this eventually comes to bite him in his tail (while he still has it). Mrs. Fox asks him to give up thieving and for a good long while he does, but soon they move into a tree directly across from the farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean and he gets that itch for one more job and plots a heist on the farms, I won’t give away what happens, but needless to say it’s not as easy going as he suspects and eventually the farmers declare all out war on the fox forcing him and all his ground dwelling comrades into hiding.

Jason Schwartzman plays Ash, fox’s son, who is small for his age and desperately wants to be an athlete like his father was, playing the single most complicated game I have ever seen described. In this character is where we see where the heart of Anderson’s film really is. It’s the awkward dynamic between father and son where the director really seems to shine. Ash’s cousin Krsitofferson (voiced by Wes Anderson’s brother Eric) comes to live with them while his father is healing from double pneumonia and immediately the rivalry begins. Kristofferson is a natural talent, he meditates often and seems to give little effort to anything he’s doing, yet still does it flawlessly. He is both confident, yet sad. You’re reminded on several occasions that his father is sick and even though the father isn’t present you still understand the father/son relationship they have and you feel for him.

The rest of the voice cast is speckled with Anderson regulars and some surprising cameos that if you notice them you’ll chuckle. I didn’t actually notice till I read the credits at the end of the film. I’m not actually very good at picking out voices on animated films; I tend to get sucked into the story, a trait I’m very proud of. But you’ll notice the obvious ones; Bill Murray, George Clooney, Willem Defoe, Owen Wilson…etc. The biggest surprise to the cast that I got the biggest kick out of was Jarvis Cocker (lead singer of the brit band pulp) playing Petey, even performing a tune for the audience, with one of the funniest punch lines in the film or at least I thought so. And a Great little cameo from Mario Batali playing Rabbit, do I even need to mention that Rabbit is the chef? Probably not.

As is expected with a Dahl adaptation there is some wonderful word play used and as I’m not familiar with the source material I can’t say if the credit should go to Dahl or Anderson (probably Dahl), but whenever a character swears instead of simply bleeping it as would simply bring attention to it being a bad word. They simply say “cuss” the first time the audience is introduced to this it took me a second to realize what they were saying, but it soon became a running joke. Even going so far as to show one scene in the town where the word “cuss” is tagged on one of the buildings.

Badger: The cuss you are.
Mr. Fox: The cuss am I? Are you cussing with me?
Badger: No, you cussing with me?
Mr. Fox: Don't cussing point at me!
Badger: If you're gonna cuss, you're not gonna cuss with me, you little cuss!
Badger: You're not gonna cuss with me!

This is obviously played off as a joke for the adult members of the audience and a few kids may speculate what the word means, but I think once the parents let them know we may even see little kids swearing less because it’s so much fun to say “cuss”!

Fantastic Mr. Fox is just that, fantastic and is deserving of all the praise it’s been receiving, the only warning I would give potential movie goers is this. If you’re not a fan of Wes Anderson or perhaps you’ve never seen his films before, this may not be the one to start with. Watch Rushmore first and if you like it have fun with Mr. Fox. If you know you don’t like his stuff then avoid this one, it’s not going to change your mind, but as for me, I loved it.

Five fantastic foxes out of five

Next up: Armored – fantastic?

Ninja Assassin – Not redundant, trust me

Its thanksgiving and I just finished eating my turkey, I wonder if I can bang this out before I pass out. Let’s take the chance…

The cast of Ninja Assassin reads like a who’s who of who? If you’re into Korean pop or by chance saw the brief rivalry he had with Stephan Colbert in 2007 you may know who Rain is. If you’ve seen the Brit-com coupling then you’ll recognized a slightly more aged Ben Miles, though to be fair, he’s the biggest name in this film. That’s not to say the acting is bad in Ninja Assassin, it’s not particularly great, but it’s about what you’d expect for an A budget B-movie. The focus is clearly on the action and it seems like a large chunk of the budget is put towards the CGI blood FX. Personally I’m a bigger fan of practical effects and would much rather see a gallon of real “blood” sprayed across the screen than a splattering of CGI blood that never lands and that has no possible way of maintaining it’s continuity, but I digress…

Let me say this first, Ninja Assassin is not a bad movie, though it did have a few faults, I’ll touch on those in a minute. The first two acts of this film were great. The opening scene is possibly one of the greatest bits of action I’ve seen in some time and the way Ninja Assassin plays with the ninja mythology is actually quite well done and does nothing to diminish my love for the darkness dwellers. The film tells the story of the ninja as that of supernatural beings, almost demons if you will. They slip in and out of shadows unseen and you’re standing there holding your heart before you can even see them.

Raizo (Rain) is a ninja of the Ozunu clan, Stolen as a child and trained to be a ninja under the guidance of the harsh clan leader. As is apt to happen with young boys and girls living together training to be ninjas, the young Kiriko falls for Raizo and helps heal his feet after an exceptionally brutal day of training. The flirtation never really develops beyond the occasional helping of the one another when they’re in trouble, but you can tell there’s something brewing under the surface. This all culminates the night Kiriko decides she’s going to leave the clan (apparently they frown upon this kind of thing in the clan). She kisses Raizo goodbye and scales the wall and of course, because they’re fucking ninjas, she’s brought back the following day to be dealt with. And dealt with she is, severely and poor Raizo can just sit there and watch.

This terrible event in his life apparently takes an awfully long time to matter to him and what seems like six or seven years later he decides to leave the clan after he’s called upon to “deal with” another fellow clansman who tries to leave. This is about where the real action starts, this is also where all the problems start, but I’ll get to those in just one more moment. Raizo successfully escapes and is living on the run, he also spends his days hunting down his former clansmen (get it? He’s an assassin of ninjas, a ninja assassin, if you will). At the same time (in a nearly pointless b storyline) Mika, A Europol agent, is uncovering a conspiracy going back a thousand years. Apparently the ninja can cover up all their trails except the paper trails left by bank deposits, yeah apparently ninjas accept wire transfers for payment for assassinations, who knew?

So aside from the fairly flimsy storyline, the film has a few other minor issues that struck me as rather irritating, A.) The director, James McTeigue, shoots the action so incredibly close that you may just get motion sickness trying to crane your head in the hopes you might catch a bit more of what the hell is going on! There are scenes in Ninja Assassin that if they had pulled back just two inches on the action you would have been hooting at how awesome the action is, but it was just lacking when you can barely tell what’s going on. This isn’t the entire movie, it seems to start around the time Raizo escapes the clan, I believe in that particular scene they zoom in and out so much that it’s like you’re watching an old home movie where your father is just discovering the zoom, I say your father because mine never bothered with most technology, but that’s another story all together. So here’s my advice to you Mr. McTeigue, pull it back a little bit, trust me you’ll be one of the best action directors in the market and everyone will love you. There are action scenes in NA that are shot wonderfully, so I know you can do it James. B.) I’m not going to spoil third act for you, so I will leave this complaint at this. The third act takes everything it builds up to with the first two acts and turns it on its ear. If they had followed the logical conclusion the story was heading this would have been an obvious five star movie, but sadly they do not and deservedly it does not get a five in my book…

Three assassinated ninjas out of five

Next up: Fantastic Mr. Fox - better be fantastic

P.S. Now I'm off to take a nap

Pirate radio – The boat that rocked

Sorry Philip Seymour Hoffman, I apologize Kenneth Branagh, my condolences; Nick frost, Jack Davenport, Rhys’ Darby and Ifans and to the rest of the cast. None of you are the star of this film, you’ve been shown up, you’ve been outdone and you’ve been made to look small. I sincerely feel bad for all of you. You all, despite a valiant effort, pale in comparison to the true star of the movie. The soundtrack! I’m not typically the type of guy who buys movie soundtracks, but I will more than likely be buying this one. A Stellar collection of rock, pop, soul and blues from, what the filmmakers so helpfully remind us is, the greatest era of British music in history. It seems obvious that a movie about a pirate rock radio station would have a lot of music in it, but they could have easily done this wrong. They could have easily stuck to the well worn and well known hits of the day and the majority of the population would have still enjoyed this movie, but it became apparent right from the beginning of the movie that filmmakers had a true love of the music as it is presented front and center and in several scenes actually steal the scene from the actors. A prime example of this is played out during a wedding scene where one of the shipmates is marrying a woman named Elinore, you’re probably already humming it to yourself (if you’re anything like me you are) and my guess is when they were making pirate radio (called the boat that rocked in Britain) they were thinking the same thing, so the scene closes with the entire cast singing “Elinore” by the turtles as the man carries his (soon to be ex) wife down the hall and into their room. I could discuss the music in the film all day, so I will forcibly remove myself from the topic. You’ve heard about the tutti fruity, now let me tell you about the whomp bomp a loo bomp ba lomp bam boom.

The story centers on a young man whose mother insists he spend some time on the boat that hosts the radio station “Radio Rock”, her motives are questioned later in the film, but I won’t discuss them here as it would be giving way too much away. While this is supposed to be the A storyline it quickly takes B billing to the frat lifestyle the boat offers. They spend a decent amount of time on each character and their quirks and before too long you feel like you’ve been on the boat with them the whole time. You get to meet the roster of radio personalities; the (fucking) count (Hoffman) and his love of expletives, midnight Mark (Tom Wisdom) who rarely speaks, even when he’s broadcasting (actual quote “wow *puffs cigarette* now *flips on new record*”), Angus (Rhys Darby) who no one likes, Doctor Dave (Nick Frost) who gets a LOT of woman for a big guy, News John (Will Adamsdale) who would gladly die for the news and weather, especially the weather, “smooth” Bob the dawn treader (Ralph Brown) who’s seen so infrequently that no one on the boat knows who he is when he first shows up, Simon (Chris O’Dowd) the morning guy and all around likeably awkward guy and last but not least “the legend” Gavin (Rhys Ifans) who seriously has the best wardrobe of the film, no one can pull off a purple velour suit like him. As well there’s the staff and the man in charge of the boat Quentin (Bill Nighy, in a roll showing that the dude can dance!) who runs the boat less like a father figure and more like that naughty uncle that your mom is probably right in not wanting you to spend too much time with.

On the other side of the dial is government agent Sir Alistair Dormandy (Branagh) who is desperate to get these, not quite, illegal stations off the air. He seeks the aid of a “clever young man” in Jack Davenport’s Twatt (pronounced exactly how you think it is), his name is the cause of many a laugh in the film, what can I say other than it’s a cheap joke, but boy does it work. I laughed each and every time I heard Kenneth Branagh say it. After several failed attempts he discovers a way to get the stations shut down, which directly results in the climax of the film, which is best not discussed as I’m not a fan of spoilers. The juxtaposition used between the raucous ship and the “stiff-upper-lip” government types is a wonderful running gag in the movie. On Boxing Day the Ship gets fortune cookies with facts in them and laughs it up when they realize it wasn’t a joke, Sir Alistair gets a joke, reads it to himself, chuckles and never reveals what the joke is “that’s enough excitement for the day.

There’s something wonderful about a cast of actors who understand drama and comedy on equal levels and pirate radio has this in spades. The comedy is flawlessly timed and the drama seems real, not phoned in or overacted, like most comedic actors like to do. In fact my only real complaint with the movie revolves around the editing. A lot of the movie is shot like a music video so there are jump cuts galore and most of the time this worked, but I feel it became a little too much. That aside, I say come for the music, stay for the comedy. It’s well worth it

Four Twatts out of Five

The Men Who Stare At Goats – all that staring gave me a headache

Ever watch a film and you notice one of your favorite actors is in it, but they’re being horribly misused? Welcome to the world of the men who stare at goats, this film is packed to the gills with stars. Not just any stars, big names that you’ve seen in dozens of films that you’ve loved and know they can pull off most roles thrown at them. Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Stephan Root and some names you may not recognize, but still deserve respect like Stephan Lang and Nick Offerman. Just take a moment to read that list again, now try to tell me you wouldn’t get excited to see a film featuring these actors. I would and I did and for the most part, when it works, it really worked, but when it didn’t you feel let down.

Remember when you’d get in trouble as a kid and you’re mother would say to you “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed”? That’s exactly what I’d like to say to the maker of this film, Grant Heslov (who actually wrote the very well made good night and good luck). I shouldn’t be too hard on the film though because I actually enjoyed it, but thinking about it afterwards made me realize that there were huge gaps between quality jokes. I’m going to write the whole thing off as inexperience in filmmaking and will hope that Grant Heslov has the chance to perfect his craft and give us the big budget comedy that the men who stare at goats should have been.

Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton, a news reporter coasting through life and his career until he happens on an interview with a man who claims he has psychic powers and can travel anywhere in the world without leaving his home. Bob brushes the interview off as a fluke and through generic plot developments finds himself in Iraq where he stumbles upon a gentleman that Bob thinks he can get an un-ambitious story about contracts from which of course turns out to be a man whom is mentioned previously by the psychic who was trained by the military as part of a top secret classified experiment. This would be George Clooney’s Lyn Cassady, a man who it doesn’t seem to take too long to get going at full speed about this “top secret” training he went through, which essentially the rest of the film. The story plays out in two running storylines set 20 years apart, but back story involves Lyn’s training and introduces you to the squad, explaining each member’s quirks and the “current” storyline taking place in 2002, which we find Lyn and Bob entangling themselves in what Lyn keeps referring to as “his mission”. The movie seems to stall out around the end of the second act and picks up again during the third act for about 10 minutes before the movie ends only to end, in my opinion, on a sour note.

The film is a disservice to Ewan McGregor’s ability as an actor and I feel they could have used the supporting cast better. The only character in the film I liked from beginning to end was Lyn Cassady. George Clooney did a fantastic job playing a man who we have a hard time accepting can do the things he does, mostly because he tends to fail at them a lot, but when he gets them right boy does he get them right. One other thing I rather enjoyed was the near constant use of the term “Jedi” Especially around Ewan McGregor. So as disappointing as this film was, it was still worth watching, even if I should have waited for DVD and not so bad as to make it to my list of terrible films of the year. It finds itself hovering right in the mediocre middle

3 ½ “Debleated” goats out of five

G.I. Joe - an old review i felt like posting

Alright let me get this off my chest first, GI Joe is NOT a good movie. not in any traditional sense of the word good. The script is terrible. The acting is sub par with a few shining exceptions and the story is laughable when it's not non existent all together. Now the real question in this case isn't if GI Joe is a good movie, because anyone with half a brain will tell you a resounding "no" with out even having to watch it. No the question isn't if the movie is good, the question is "did i like it?" the answer to that question is a half hearted "sure, why not". I felt kind of manic depressive watching this "film". I was like a 10 year old with a box full of joes getting ready to set up an epic battle during the action scenes, but the dialog scenes made me wish i could take a nap and let the next explosion wake me up.

I will not discuss the art direction or directing or cinematography of this film, most of the movie was done with CGI (poorly). I will also not discuss the storyline, because most of you out there that have heard of GI Joe know that it's an epic clash between good and evil. And there's that word, evil...one of the best things the movie had going for it was that the villains were not the same cobra that we got used to seeing in the cartoons, these guys are demented and pure evil and they don't concoct half baked ideas that get thwarted around every turn, they mean business and they let the audience know this pretty early on in the film. You spend a great deal of the film actually wondering if the Joes are gonna lose in the end and some would argue that they do. The movie sets up perfectly for a sequel, not like you had any doubt they'd make a second one.

One of the other brilliant parts of the film revolve around flashbacks. In this case storm shadow and snake eyes, the kids they got to play the young versions of them are amazing fighters and the scenes really carry entire sections of the movie making to hope that you'll get another flashback of them. The duke flashbacks are there as gap fillers in the story. They help explain things that are taking place in the present. the big twist is barely a twist and the other twist is fun, but not surprising. all in all a good romp laced with fun action sequences, the accelerator suit scenes in particular are rather fun to watch. the slow mo stuff they show in the trailer doesn't do those scenes justice. so I will be giving G.I. Joe 3 out of 5 stars, but to be honest if I could I would give it a 2 1/2. wait for the dvd unless you MUST see the explosions on the big screen

(note: this is an older review i wrote and i didn't really take my time with it, nor did I proof read it too well so cut me some slack.)