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.)

UP! - up and away in my beautiful balloon

They say your life flashes before your eyes before you die, well in the case of up! We see Carl Fredricksen’s (Ed Asner) life flash before our eyes in the first several minutes of the film. We see Carl as a young man longing to be an explorer. We see Carl happen upon his future wife, Ellie; we see them grow up together, we see them go through the good times and the bad times, we see them grow old and eventually we see the passing of Ellie. Never in my years of film obsession have I ever grown to love a character so fast and then subsequently shed tears for their lose than I do with Carl. If Pixar had decided to skip this intro to Carl’s life the film would have had a completely different impact, you wouldn’t have cared for him, he would have just been a cantankerous old man.

The premise is simple enough; it’s a story of a man going to extremes to do what he promised his wife they were going to do. They had decided many years ago to build a house at the top of paradise falls (based on angel falls in Venezuela) and seeing as the banks are hassling Carl to sell his home he decides the best thing to do is attach millions of helium balloons and fly his house there, sounds easy enough right? Actually the flying the house to South America part is actually very easy, It’s the people he picks up along the way and the adventures they end up going on that complicate Carl’s plan. Soon after Carl takes off he discovers that a young wilderness explorer named Russell on his front porch, he was under it when they took off looking for a snipe. When they get to Paradise Falls after a bit of bad weather they discover that they can walk the house to Carl’s desired destination. On the way to set the house down they encounter a bird and a dog that can talk via a special collar. Not to give too much away, basically the dog (Doug) works for a man who’s after the bird and the adventures for rest of the film are that of Carl trying to stop his one time hero (Charles Muntz voiced by Christopher Plummer) from taking the bird and Doug (who may be one of Pixar’s most lovable character ever) and Russell helping him against Charles and his band of killer, though loveably ordinary dogs.

Up! May very well be Pixar’s finest bit of animation, It takes the opposite view of ratatouille which went out of it’s way to be insanely detailed. Up! Tends to be more simplistic, but I find it fits the style of the story wonderfully. The film manages to blend emotional highs and lows, depression and elation seamlessly to produce an honest look at one man’s life. 5 out of 5 stars

paranormal activity - did it live up to the hype?

I don’t believe in ghosts and I don’t believe in demons, but I understand why they’re considered frightening. There’s one thing that makes ghost stories that much more frightening than say slasher films or gore films. Where the slasher and gore films may be slightly more set in some sort of reality, ghost films aren’t. you can’t see the enemy pursuing, you never know when it’s going to strike, you’re filled with a constant knot of dread in your stomach and most importantly, you can’t fight back.

Paranormal activity manages to do one thing that American horror films have notoriously lacked, it fills you with a sense of unease, from the moment the movie begins you’ll have a knot in your stomach wondering when something is going to happen. When something does happen, you’ll feel the payoff for the wait is worth it. The film takes its premise very seriously; there are no opening credits, just a disclaimer stating that it’s a video documentation of what happened to this couple, not even a title screen, there’s also no closing credits which leaves you a little disconcerted when the movie ends. There’s a term I coined to describe this kind of movie, which until today I had used exclusively for a type of Japanese film. I call them “creep films”, because they creep you out. The Japanese usually do this by tossing startling imagery at you in the form of small boy ghosts and women covered in blood climbing through you TV to murder you. There’s nothing like this in paranormal activity, but the term still applies, as the movie is a ghost story, or more aptly a demon story. The film maintains this unease from start to finish, building to a crescendo in the climax in the final minutes of the film.

I’ll get to the thing everyone wants to know, will this movie scare you? Probably not, but depends on how easily frightened you are. There are some very disturbing images in the film and a few things that may even haunt you for a couple days after seeing the film. Overall, however, I would say the movie is more geared towards people who like to feel creeped out and have a sense that something really bad is about to happen and there’s nothing you can do about it. Dread permeates the film and it’s an uncomfortable ride witnessing what happens to poor Micah and Katie. The film strikes me as the type of thing that will end up being very polarizing, there are going to be the people who are going to say it wasn’t scary and therefore not worth wasting your time on, but I will argue this point. No the movie is not scary in the traditional sense, but it is frightening if you let yourself get absorbed into the film and with everything that the characters are going through. If you don’t think you can do that, don’t bother seeing the film. 4 out of 5 stars

Zombieland: follow the rules

Horror Comedies tend not to fair well in the box office, this doesn’t seem to be the case with Zombieland and there’s a reason to that. Zombieland is a brilliantly made film that also happens to be funny as hell from start to finish. The basic story follows a young man who’s simply referred to as “Columbus” (Jesse Eisenberg) as this is where he’s from. He encounters a man who will be referred to as “Tallahassee” (Woody Harrelson) who is, at this point in the movie, either the biggest badass left on the planet OR maybe just a tad mentally unstable, perhaps both? They decide for some inexplicable reason to join up and travel together after a humorously tense “stand-off”. It quickly becomes apparent that Tallahassee has some screws loose, but this ups the humor factor by many degrees and frankly if it weren’t for the antics of Tallahassee, a good chunk of the movie wouldn’t be nearly as good as it was. I am, however, getting ahead of myself. Columbus, you see, lives by a certain code of honor, a set of rules he’s established for his personal survival. Tallahassee lives by his own personal law as well, it’s much simpler and to the point “enjoy the small things” and in his case that consists of killing zombies, breaking stuff (“venting steam” as he puts it), and desperately trying to find the one snack food he so longs for.

The entire opening section of the movie after the opening credits is Columbus explaining and showing examples of his rules in action. The basics of which are cardio, the double tap (putting an extra bullet in their head to ensure they’re dead), always wear your seatbelt, limber up, don’t be a hero and always check the backseat amongst others. The rules must have worked for him because, frankly, looking at his past there’s no way he should have survived. Speaking of the movie’s opening, the credit sequence in this movie is easily one of the best I’ve seen this year, right up there with watchmen’s, actually the two are very similar despite the different content. It’s all super slow motion Shots of zombies attacking people while “for whom the bell tolls” by Metallica plays

The movie is set, quite literally, across the entire United States. They start in Texas and head east, Ohio and Florida respectively; where during a food stop/Tallahassee steam vent they encounter a couple of survivors named Wichita and Little Rock (played by the gorgeous Emma Stone and the still adorable though she’s starting to grow up Abigail Breslin). I don’t want to ruin some of the best scenes in the movie for you, but let’s just say eventually they “decide” to travel together. Wichita and Little Rock are heading to pacific playland, which they hear is zombie free. The boys “decide” to come along and they wind up in Hollywood, Tallahassee makes the brilliant idea of staying at some celebrity’s home, he describes the person as the “top of the A+” celebrities….it turns out to be Bill Murray, in one of the funniest cameos I’ve seen in a very long time.

I’m not going to discuss the end of the film, but will state that it’s very well done and has some wonderfully funny moments. All in all though I will end by saying that the casting on this film could not have been any better, every time I see Jesse Eisenberg in a film I like him more and more. Woody Harrelson is in top notch form and Emma Stone is proving that she can hang with the big dogs now, though it’s pretty easy when you have the co-stars she has in this. Zombieland does sway much harder in the comedy direction, but there are some good jump scares and the make up FX are done well, and the film is shot beautifully. There are some wonderful parts where if someone does something, or fails to do something on Columbus’ master list a graphic will subtly spring up in the background acknowledging this, little touches like this are what make the film so worth watching. 5 our of 5 stars