Day 149: "You know the part in scary movies when somebody does something really stupid, and everybody hates them for it? This is it."

I loves me my monster movies.  I heard some good things about Jeepers Creepers, so I thought it was high time I watched it.  Not one of my better decisions.  A mediocre monster, mediocre script, and mediocre acting combine in a confluence of astounding mediocrity.  This had the potential to be pretty good, the origin story of The Creeper wasn't bad, but the rest of it is just...meh.  I understand that the filmmakers were trying to create the new Jason or Freddy here, but it just didn't work out all that well.  It's weird, If I hate a movie I have a lot to say; if I love a movie, I have a lot to say;  with a movie I am completely apathetic towards, words escape me.

A young, relatively unknown cast is here, the only standout was Justin Long.  I'm really sorry here readers, but there just isn't a lot to say about this, good or bad.  For every cool moment in this, there is an inexplicably bad one to offset it.  The usual horror movie idiocy applies here as well, as the victims repeatedly make decisions that place them firmly in harm's way, even when the option to escape and put the situation in their rear-view mirror is wide open.  I just didn't get it.

If you're desperate for a horror movie and everything else is checked out, give it a whirl, otherwise, there are much better options.  I wanted to enjoy this more, but I really couldn't get into it.  5/10.

See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!

Day 148: "You're a woman of hidden talents, Mrs Peel."

You know how every great actor has that one or two movies that they wish they could just make go away and never be bothered with admitting they had anything to do with?  The Avengers provides that unlucky circumstance for three actors.  A big screen, Hollywood-ized, awful, big budget production based on the 60's TV show of the same name, The Avengers is an object lesson in how not to bring a classic show to theaters.  Terrible script, worse acting (considering the cast, this is a real surprise), and just plain bad, the filmmakers tried to bring the highly stylized series to a new generation, and failed completely.  Just because something was considered groundbreaking in an earlier decade is no guarantee that it will do as well in the modern era.  Austin Powers would have been uncomfortable in this.  The story revolves around a psychopathic villain who want to rule the world (surprise there, huh?) and has a weather controlling device to aid him in achieving this goal.  It's up to the unflappably British John Steed and Emma Peel to save the day.  Would I need a spoiler alert if I was to tell you who wins in this particular conflict?

Ralph Fiennes is John Steed, absolutely British in his portrayal, and just as emotional.  Uma Thurman plays Emma Peel, barely.  If this was going to be the celebration of English spy style and attitude, why her?  I guess a proper English actress wanted nothing to do with this.  Is it me or does she just look really creepy when she tries to pull off sexy-smart?  Worst of all is Sean Connery as Sir August De Wynter (get it?  The weather thing?), so over the top and ridiculous, I was never able to take any part of his role seriously; and his role was INTENDED to go too far.

Just terrible and a total waste of my time, with only a couple of interesting pieces, and they weren't even THAT interesting.  Shame, I love Ralph Fiennes, and really wanted to see him in a role that wasn't high drama or a meglomaniacal, psychotic Nazi wizard.  Oh well, guess I'll keep waiting.  The Avengers is completely laughable, in the bad way.  Skip it.  3/10.

See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!

Day 147: "Kissing would be nice, yes?"

A crap, jazz-era retelling of the story of The Frog Prince, The Princess and the Frog was Disney's latest attempt to make new an old fairy tale.  Nice try, but no cigar.  I'm not buying into this one Disney.  This was bad beginning to end.  Bad joke, bad songs, and even (surprisingly) bad animation.  You know Disney animators are phoning it in when they are recycling character models from, not only, older movies, but several characters look eerily familiar to each other in this one as well.  This is a first for me, a Disney animated feature I hate.  This whole thing is like a badly animated Zatarain's commercial, music and all.

I can rip on a bad movie only so long, and I am running out of scathingly sarcastic and funny things to say about this piece of s**t.  Thank God they found a new crew when they made Tangled.  The movie is just an animated advertisement for Louisiana and New Orleans.  Kids may go for this, but I hated it.  2.25/10.

See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!

Day 146: "A car like this attracts a lot of attention. Have you thought about that?"

So, what happens when you combine an ordinary heist film with a high-tech vehicle film?  Absolutely nothing, and it's name is Black Moon Rising.  Released in 1986 during the heyday of such movies and TV shows as Blue Thunder, Airwolf, and Firefox, Black Moon Rising attempts to cash in on this short-lived sub-genre, but falls short.  Written, to my complete and utter surprise, by John Carpenter (yep, THAT John Carpenter), BMR revolves around the theft of a data tape, critical to the U.S. District Attorney's case against a Las Vegas casino group.  The stolen tape is placed, inexplicably, in an experimental automobile on its way to Los Angeles.  Now this tape was stolen from the casino group by the best professional thief that the FBI could afford, and he just puts it in this car HOPING to get it back.  The experimental car itself is then stolen by a auto theft ring, and from there everything goes incomprehensible.  The story, for what it is, moves along at a good pace, but goes nowhere.

A young Tommy Lee Jones stars as the professional thief, Quint.  He is actually the best thing about the movie, putting his own unique stamp on the character and making  Quint the only fun thing to watch.  I am including the car in that statement.  Linda Hamilton is one of the ringleaders of the auto thieves, and is so wooden, Hayden Christensen wouldn't believe it.  Robert Vaughn is the primary villain, but by the time he was introduced, I really didn't care.

The high-tech vehicle was boring, the acting (for the most part) was awful, and the story seems to have been written during a weekend bender in Tijuana.  There are much better movies in this same mold, my personal favorite being Firefox, but if you see that one, be warned it is really dated in 2011, but still a fun spy flick.  As for  Black Moon Rising, well, every family tree has its Dutch Elm Disease.  4.75/10.

See you tomorrow,  and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!

Day 145: "Mine's the big red one, and he's going to beat them all."

Let me get this out there from the start.  I never understood the appeal of horse racing, I hate horses, and I wish Disney would knock off their recent habit of making every single sports underdog/comeback story into a sappy, feel-good movie.  Now that that's out of my system, Secretariat was pretty good.  I understand that a horse winning the Triple Crown is a near impossible feat, but I had no idea how near to impossible.  The story follows the history of the family who owns the stable responsible for Secretariat, from even before his birth.  From his birth to his unbelievably monstrous win at the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat shows the audience every aspect of the circumstances surrounding this amazing animal's meteoric rise to "The Greatest Racehorse Ever."  I never thought I would be engaged in this in any way, and I am glad to say I was wrong.

Starring Diane Lane as Secretariat's owner Penny Chenery, she brings a sense of "reality" to the character and it just made her absolutely believable.  John Malkovich steals every scene he is in as eccentric trainer Lucien Laurin.  Scott Glenn, James Cromwell, Dylan Walsh, and Margo Martindale round out an exceptional cast, bringing Chenery's support a life and drama of their own.

I was fully expecting to hate this movie, but, damn Disney and their "feel-good" black magic, I really enjoyed it.  Good for the whole family, and a pretty good history lesson of one of the most difficult achievements in the sporting world, the Triple Crown.  Not necessarily a keeper, but I'll watch it again.  8/10.

See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!

Day 144: "I just wish for once that you could be in my shoes, Mr. Prosecutor, and then you would know something that you don't know: mercy!"

Midnight Express is another one of those critically acclaimed movies that has just seemed to slip out of range of my radar for years.  Not this time!  Like Billy Hayes, I finally caught it (horrible pun, but I couldn't resist).  Based on the memoirs of Billy Hayes, an American citizen caught attempting to smuggle two kilograms of hashish out of Turkey to the United States.  He was brought to a sham of a trial, sentenced to three years for possession, then, with little more than a month to go before his release, the Turkish government decided to make an example of him and change the crime to smuggling, and the sentence to thirty years.  I had heard many things about this movie, mostly good, all warning me about the brutality of the story.  Those people were correct, this is, without a doubt one of the most inhumane stories I have seen.  The violence and inhumanity of the place is not there for shock value, but to convey what this man had to endure for year after year.  Billy Hayes was in no way a saint, but damn....no one deserves to endure what he went through at the hands of his Turkish jailers.

Brad Davis does an extraordinary job portraying Billy Hayes.  I forgot a couple of times that this was not a documentary, and was blown away by his transformation into a man utterly crushed by a corrupt system.  Randy Quaid and John Hurt also appear as fellow inmates, doing magnificent jobs themselves.  Looking at the sets and surroundings of the prisoners, it was easy to see how they could so thoroughly throw themselves into their roles.  Paul Smith plays the sadistic warden Hamidou with such gusto that I had difficulty remembering that he was also Bluto in Popeye and The Beast Rabban in Dune.  Both other roles were evil and sadistic as well, but there was a humorous side to both that is nowhere to be found in Midnight Express.

From the unforgettable, synthesized soundtrack, to the story, to the acting, Midnight Express is a magnificent film, and one not to be missed.  I will warn you that there is not a lot of "feel-good" moments in here, and even visits from family and friends is disturbing to watch.  Check it out, it's definitely worth it.  9/10.

See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!

Day 143: "Crew of the Yamato, the Earth is ours."

As my Facebook friends are aware, I have been on a bit of a nostalgia kick lately.  One of my favorite shows from when I was a kid was the Japanese import Star Blazers.  A sprawling space epic, Star Blazers was translated to American from the original series Space Battleship Yamato.  For years, I wanted to see it made into a live action series or even a movie, just to see that badass ship fly just once more.  Well, in 2010, it happened.  Space Battleship Yamato was released in Japan, and now onto my list.  The story is really to in depth to cover adequately here, but the gist of it is this: Earth has been bombarded by radioactive "Planet bombs" for several years by the aggressive Gamilas.  The government receives an invitation from planet Iskandar to come and retrieve a device which will rid the Earth of all toxic radiation, making it habitable again.  The government rebuilds the World War 2 Japanese battleship Yamato as a spacecraft, arming it with some of the most destructive weaponry in the galaxy.  The group sets out on its mission, cue story.  The story is not without its fair share of melodrama, and lots of it, but the space battles are everything the sci-fi geek in me could have ever wanted.  I only wished that there was more.  The effects were fantastic, Yamato looked exactly as I would have imagined it would in reality.  The battles were sufficiently epic, with only the sound design being the slight drawback.  Seeing the ship in action, and the Black Tigers squadron dogfighting in space again, it was like being in front of the TV after school again.  The filmmakers got just about everything right, and the stuff that isn't right, they did better. 

Other than the overly dramatic interpersonal relationships, the merely passable acting, and the inexplicable Steven Tyler end credits song (I kid you not, THAT Steven Tyler) I absolutely loved this movie.  This was my Transformers, only a thousand times better.  If you are a fan of Star Blazers, Anime, or even science fiction in general, see this movie, assuming you can find it.  It wasn't easy, but it was SO worth it.  9/10.

See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!