Paul Blart Mall Cop - review -

Lately moviegoers have been practically choked to death with Academy Award hopefuls that are invading the theaters with a vengeance, making up for the lackluster summer, however it is surprising that during a month where so many interesting films are out there, the American movie going audience chooses to make Paul Blart Mall Cop, a number one film. Maybe America is tired of the pretentious Oscar nominees, and just wants to laugh. Well they get a lot of laughs with Paul Blart.

Paul Blart Mall Cop is about an overweight, and under appreciated mall cop who takes his job just a bit too seriously. Paul goes into work everyday with the attitude that he can - and will - save the world, by protecting it's most important assest, the mall. Paul tries his best while working to avoid mall employees who, for lack of a better word, are douche bags, and make fun of him for his serious nature and his idiotic moments. This is best shown by his getting distracted by a new kiosk vendor who is so pretty, Paul forgets what he is doing and runs his segway into the back of a minivan parked for display in the mall.

What Paul does have going for him is a loving, and supporting family who are there to back him up with a nice slice of pie covered, for some reason, in peanut butter to help ease the pain of the world that seems to hate him. Paul does get his chance to prove himself to the world when his mall is overrun by thugs who plan to steal the codes from the mall stores credit card machines and make off with a nice sum of money. What they didn't count on was that Paul would turn into a hilarious version of a hero and save the day.

This film has a few good things going for it, for one it is really funny, and the acting is spot on. Kevin James is simply hilarious as the pathetic Paul Blart, and he makes you care about the lovable loser with every turn. Also going good for Paul Blart Mall Cop is the fast pace at which the movie goes, the action doesn't stop and the laughs keep coming from start to finish. The movie never takes itself too seriously, and keeps the humor mainly lowbrow.

With the good come the bad however, and Paul Blart Mall Cop has some curiously head scratching aspects to it, For one, the bad guys in this film all seem to have graduated from the school of extreme running and jumping. It looks like an ad for the X games whenever these incredibly athletic villains appear onscreen. I take this as a good and bad, because I choose to think it was a sly way of the filmmakers to poke fun at recent action films in which everyone in them seems to be gifted in the agility department. For a good example check out the horrible Transporter 3, but be warned it is terrible.

I can understand why everyone wanted to see this instead of boring Oscar contenders (i.e. Benjamin Button), and that is why Paul Blart made it to the number one slot. Of course it probably wont stay there, but it deserved to be on top for the laughs it gives.

Paul Blart wont go down in history as one of the funniest films to ever be made, and probably will be forgotten as time goes on, but it has some good laughs and is worth checking out.

Run Fatboy Run - Review- (aka Run Fatboy Run the cinematic equivalent of a Diet Coke)

I'm a huge Simon Pegg fan, I really enjoyed his BBC show "Spaced" and his films "Hot Fuzz" and "Shaun of the Dead" the latter of which being my favorite of his work thus far. So when I heard that he was in a new comedy "Run Fatboy Run" I was of course excited at the prospect of seeing more of Simon Pegg's humor on the big screen.
I of course ran into a few problems right away. One was that this film didn't get a wide enough release and was in and out of the theaters so quickly that I never even got a chance to see it, and second by the time I did get to see it I had already heard some pretty bad reviews of it and was getting ready for disaster.

Now, "Run Fatboy Run" isn't a bad film, in fact it's pretty good, the comedy is spot on, and you start to feel for the characters in the film right away. This is shown best with the panic attack Pegg's character Dennis endures as he is preparing to wed his pregnant girlfriend. As he runs away from the chapel, sweat pouring down his face, I could completely associate with the feeling of making a mistake and wanting to run. As the film progresses we are shown that Dennis never meant to leave his girlfriend, but was afraid of ruining her life, and this fear keeps him away from her until he sees that her new seemingly perfect boyfriend is planning on marrying her and taking her away from him forever. This is why Dennis decides to run the marathon in the film, to show her he can finish what he starts, and of course he does. Que sappy rom-com music and close the curtains on the chipper ending.

After viewing this film I sat back and digested what I just saw, it was really a standard romantic comedy with little substance and cookie cutter characters. You could replace Pegg with anyone, and get the same result. Honestly this film felt like a Hugh Grant vehicle that was given to Pegg instead. They didn't take advantage of his snarky comedic wit at all, but rather gave him stale situations in which to perform in. Sadly this film falls under the umbrella of rom-com features that if you've seen one, you've seen them all.

The shinning points from this film were the actors, including Simon Pegg, a surprisingly fit Hank Azaria, and one of my favorite British actors, Dylan Moran. With a comedic team like this in a film you would think the laughs would come much more frequently and feel more natural. Sadly they don't but few generally great comedic moments in the film had me laughing out loud.

For these reasons after watching "Run Fatboy Run" I felt that it was the cinematic equivalent of a Diet Coke, sure it has some interesting flavor and will leave you with a bittersweet aftertaste, but all the good stuff from Coke is gone and replaced by fake sugar that just makes it bland. "Run Fatboy Run" was an interesting film, just not one that I would say I would buy or honestly care about past the initial viewing.

A short break, and time to reflect.

So I took a short break from all things film for awhile and just sat back and took care of some things in my life that needed taking care of. I'm starting a new leg on a journey that I have no clue where it will take me, and I realized that one of the reasons why I didn't have much to say about movies was that I like to review them, which caused me to decide to reenter the world of reviewing films and give it one more shot.

Perhaps I just needed a break because of all the stress that I was under and I just couldn't write anything interesting due to that stress. Well now I've come a bit farther in my life and reduced some stress and am taking a fresh start with this new year.

Sadly I haven't been to the theater much lately so I'll be reviewing some films that are out on DVD for awhile until I head back to the theater.

Take Care everyone, and thanks for reading.

-Will

Three Reasons Why: The Replacement Killers edition

Director Antoine Fuqua has made some pretty interesting and decent films over the years, from Tears of the Sun, Training Day, and Shooter. However one of his earliest films is probably one of his best (Behind Training Day) - and that movie is The Replacement Killers.

This was a film that came out and was quickly forgotten by a lot of people, the standard dvd release included some piss poor transferring of the original film, and no special features. But don't let that bring you down, The Replacement Killers was an awesome action film that had a great plot and good acting, but I'm not going to review it, instead I'm going to give Three Reasons Why this movie was awesome.


Reason One:
This film featured some of the best action sequences around at the time. Not only were they good they were realistic, unlike today's action films which tend to be ridiculous (I'm pointing squarely at you here Transporter 3) . Nothing was too over the top so it kept the film grounded and interesting. I'm not saying wickedly impossible stunts aren't bad, but who didn't die inside a little with Die Hard 4's jet plane sequence? I know I did


Reason Two:
Danny Trejo. Yeah that's right, the best character actor since Clint, Howard Danny Trejo is featured in this film as an assassin sent to kill the main character. Any film featuring Danny Trejo gets extra princess points in my book. I mean come on, this guy is fucking Machete! This guy is an amazing actor, he came from nothing and became one of the toughest guys in the business. Honestly all "tough-guy" actors are pussies in comparison to Danny Trejo.


(This about sums up just how bad ass Danny Trejo is, I'm pretty sure he actually just goes out to the grocery store like this.)


Reason Three:
Mira Sorvino kicks major ass. Coming fresh off the heels of the comedy Romy and Michelle, Sorvino does a major U-Turn in this film and is one sexy ass kicking machine. Her gruff nature and all around toughness really made the film. I can think of other actresses who do tough girl roles, but few who do girly-girly roles, then turn around and are a bad ass. Plus, did I mention she's smoking hot?

(The gun just makes her even hotter)

So yeah, there are my three reasons why The Replacement Killers was a great film. Sure, this list didn't go into technical details because honestly this film wasn't exactly all that memorable. It didn't fare well at the box office and some of the acting was total BS. but I enjoy it and would watch it again in a heartbeat and really in the end that's all that matters. How much YOU like the movie, what made YOU like it, and these three reasons are why I like The Replacement Killers.

(As a side note after some research I found out that this is actually available on BluRay and Standard in an extended edition, I don't know about the special features, but hopefully they put some good ones in there)

Someone pressed the reset button, and it was me!

I have spent a lot of my time watching movies and writing, what I hoped, were insightful reviews of the films I watched. I seemed to have an opinion about everything in them, but kept falling into the generic format trap that I tried so desperately to stay away from. The one thing I wanted more than anything else was a discussion of the films I had watched, someone to bounce thoughts off of, what they liked, what they did not like, and all that good stuff

With this is mind you can understand why I felt so trapped in the conventional medium of review writing, I felt that it was a wasted effort to write reviews on movies I had watched because anyone can write a review, but only a few people can actually do a good job of it.
So it is with that notion that I decided that my review writing days were done, I had officially hung up my hat on review writing and decided to start doing what I loved, talking about movies, not writing generic synopsis of them.

This is where you find me now, with a new ideal in my life on what I want to write. No more generic reviews that are stamped out like license plates, but instead something different. A discussion and my own thoughts on the films I watch.

So from this day forward this blog will be my own personal thoughts and opinions on what I have seen, what made that film good, or bad, and anything else film related that crosses my mind.

For those of you who read my reviews, I thank you and wish to send you to my friend James blog: Whispers of a Cinematic Echo which is an excellent resource for film reviews. James has an amazing amount of reviews and it really is one of the best review blogs out there.

Thank you for checking out my blog and enjoy what you read. If you have a movie suggestion, let me know! And I'll be sure to check it out.

-William

Remakes, a rant

I, like anyone who is interested in reading this blog, love films. There is no better evening to me than watching a film and the having a discussion about it afterwards. Sometimes I am lucky and get great conversation, other times I get the "Yeah that was cool." blanket statement with no follow up (But that is a topic for another rant).

So with that in mind you can tell I get excited to see a film when it comes out, or when I find one on sale that I had never watched before. This excitement, which I can compare only to a small child finding a treasure trove of chocolate bars, is great - that is until I realize that this "new" film is nothing more than a remake of an older film.

Call me crazy, but do we really need remakes of classic or foreign films? Was there someone who said;
"Hey you know what, no one alive has seen Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece 'Psycho' lets do a shot-for-shot raping of that original and shit it out onto the fans of film. They wont even know it's a remake, no one sees old movies anymore!"
This has to be the reasoning behind their motivations to remake films. No one will see the original, we'll make it better.
Bullshit.

What usually happens is someone rapes the corpse of a classic film and then drags the mutilated body over to another place and smears it's remains on an "updated concept" and calls it a
re-imagining of the original.
Bullshit.
Call it what it is, a way to cash in on a good idea and shit on it while you're at it. Unoriginality at it's worst.

I have never, ever, in all my life, heard someone say; "Oh hey that film is old, what we need is an updated version of it, I can relate to. Throw in cursing and nudity and sponsors. That will appeal to my generation."
Hell No! These films don't need to be updated, they were perfect the way they were, and if not, then don't try to fix them, leave them alone! If it sucked and tanked the first time, guess what, logic states it will probably suck a second time around.

Think about it, if this continues to happen, eventually we'll see "re-imaginings" of remakes of old films, a third generation inbred bastard of cinema! I really do not want to live in a world where someday, some suit out there while clutching a stress ball and kicking back on his huge desk, thinks of updating The Dark Knight for an audience that never saw the original, so it will be "new to them".

How about you keep your greasy fingers off the classic films, and think of something new. I'm sure there are plenty of great scripts just dying to be read and turned into films. Why do you have to update an older film? Did anyone want The Poseidon Adventure updated? How about Psycho? What about those classic Asian horror films, did anyone want to see a remake of The Eye? No, I didn't think so.

So there's my rant, people will see the classic films if they were good enough to see, and if they don't like Black & White because they live in a fast paced colorful society filled with I-Pods and blackberries, well fuck them. Let them watch Moulin Rouge.

Moulin Rouge, the film equivalent of a giant shit.

There is not a lot that you can say about a person who watches MTV, they no longer have a grasp of music, as MTV has ceased to be a music station. The average viewer's attention span lasts about as long as a fly's and they no longer can appreciate a good film.

This is why Baz Luhrmann's film Moulin Rouge did so well with this audience. Baz, a known music video director decided to add to his list of accomplishments a musical film geared towards those who can't sit still long enough to enjoy a film.Moulin Rouge is what would happen if someone wanted to make a film for a crow, bright shiny objects flash across the screen at breakneck speeds and the colors are so vibrant you'd think the skittles rainbow vomited all over the place, I'll go more into what I think of Baz's directing in a little bit.

The plot for this film revolves around Christian (Ewan McGregor) a budding playwright who moves to Paris with the hopes of writing a wondrous play about love. Christian is so fascinated with the notion of love, you would think he is actually a fourteen year old girl drawing hearts on her school notebook. While in Paris he joins a theatre cast headed by Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo) who informs Christian that they are attempting to put on a play, but need funding. So where else to go but that infamous brothel/dance hall the Moulin Rouge.

Here the movie starts to get terrible. True it didn't start off all that great, but Ewan McGregor and John Leguizamo do lend to the film a certain comedic air that is enjoyable. Once the viewer enters the Moulin Rouge however, all of that is thrown in a wastebasket and lit on fire.

The Moulin Rouge is what would happen if a five year old ate a box of crayola crayons and vomited all over everyone. The colors are drastic, and too vibrant, you can tell that this film was geared towards those who get easily distracted ("Oooh look at the pretty colors!"). Once the music starts I began to cringe. We are given samples of famous songs, done in a dance beat remix as the stars of the film make their way across the stage in various dance numbers. Honestly after hearing two sampled songs I began to realize that this movie could have been better with original songs in it, and maybe a better director . . . more on that later. . .

Soon we see the Moulin Rouge's star performer Satine (Nicole Kidman) who descends from the ceiling in a shower of sparkles and begins an atrocious version of Diamonds are a girls best friend. We come to learn that a Duke (Richard Roxburgh) has his sights, and sex drive, set on Satine and his financing the Moulin Rouge depends on his night with Satine.Through some sneaky dealings Toulouse gets Christian the interview with Satine instead of the Duke and the two fall in love instantly. Ah, love, how sweet . . . when the actors have chemistry that is.

As the film progresses The Duke is tricked into financing the Moulin Rouge so that it changes from a brothel to a playhouse overnight. Soon enough the Duke catches on to the fact that he is being played by Satine and Christian and forces Satine to sever ties with Christian if she wants to be more than just a common whore. Of course, love prevails, and in an interesting final number the pair are reunited on stage and the Duke is thwarted at his own game. However, plot twist!, Satine's illness (I'm guessing it was Tuberculosis) comes forth and kills her as she lies in Christian's arms. So sad, love, she is a cruel mistress.The film ends with Christian writing the story of Satine and the Moulin Rouge, getting his emotions out on paper, and finally writing that great play about love.

Did that sound vague, Confusing, or move too fast? That was basically how watching Moulin Rouge was. The film moved at a pace only a hyperactive child could appreciate. Honestly when the camera wasn't whirling around, or the film speeding up, the directing was decent and you got to appreciate the visuals and backgrounds. Those moments were so few and far between however, that mostly it was all a blur of colors, music, and dancing.

To say that the directing was bad is only a half-truth. Baz Luhrmann is a good director, of music videos, his film effort is like watching a music video for almost two hours, nauseating and boring. Baz Luhrmann would be better suited to sticking to music videos and staying far, far away from film efforts. If you don't believe me, watch his other "famous" film Romeo & Juliet. I can say that Baz has a style all to his own, and he does it quite efficiently, however his reputation comes from those who enjoy MTV and fluff films with no depth.

The acting wasn't bad at all, everyone did a good job and that saved this film from complete disaster. Ewan McGregor is an excellent actor, and singer, and I enjoyed his presence on the screen. I didn't feel that he and Nicole Kidman had any chemistry, but she still did a fine job in her role as well.Really the acting was the best part of this film, everyone did incredibly well, and they looked to be very happy doing it.

The score bothered me mainly because it was all remixes of famous songs. I think that had this film gone with original content it could have been much, much better. The rehashing of music just makes it seem lazy, it was like being at a high school prom where the DJ hits the remix button nonstop.

In the end I did not like this film at all, perhaps if the directing wasn't so hectic, or geared towards ADHD patients, and the songs were original I would have liked it better. At the heart of the film is an interesting story, but the presentation is so bad that it's hard to even make it through to the end.

Grade: D