All posts in Movies

Don’t judge a book by the cover, right?

This was a fairly decent movie. It has not been getting a whole lot of press in one way or another. However, I knew that it was supposed to be a period piece in the the drama/romance/fantasy/scifi genre. So, I figured it would probably be alright.

The film it setup was setup basically as one of those it ends at the beginning and one of the guy explains the whole thing. Whatever I guess, I don’t really like that setup myself.

I am kind of surprised that Ed Norton was in this film, because I generally consider him to be a first rate actor, so I am not sure why he was working with these other people. Well, I guess you could say that Paul Giamatti is a pretty decent actor, but Jessica Biel? She is just awful. My guess is that Ed was drawn by the producers who are affiliated with both Crash (pretty good) and Sideways (awful).

The film itself moved along pretty slowly, I quite frequently wanted to check my watch but managed to resist the urge. It was not really because it was bad, but just slow.

The special effects were pretty interesting. Although, I thought that for the Illusionist in the film to actually be able to pull off some of those tricks, well, it would require technology that would be rather anachronistic. But, I guess it does not really ruin the suspencion of disbelief since they did not really dwell on the how (they wanted to know the how but it was never revealed), just the why.

I am going to ruin the movie for everyone by saying that there is a twist at the end, but I am not going to say what or when it happens. Basically, I just want to know what other people thought of it, so if you have seen it, let me know.

The bottomline is that I cannot recommend this movie to everyone, it is pretty decent movie, but I just don’t think that everyone would enjoy it. So, if you are into older period pieces focusing on romance with slight supernatural elements you will probably like this film.

In an era of lack luster copy cats it is nice to find something worth while here and there.

This has been a pretty dry year for movies, and I mean dry. The movie industry seems to be stuck in a glut of regurgitating every idea that has ever graced a screen big or small regardless of whether or not the original idea was a good one. Thus, we have seen such poor remakes as Poseidon, and bad television series like Miami Vice making it to the big screen. Or, perhaps one of the worst examples: Scary Movie 4, I mean seriously what were they thinking? But, I digress…

This movie is the second “must see” movie of the year, coming in a close second to Thank You for Smoking. I know that you can just read one of a hundred other thousand reviews for the movie available on the net so I will not delve too deeply into the events of the movie, but I will say that the humor is so perfectly awkward that the film should be seen in a theater is at all possible. There are several, “I cannot believe what they are doing” moments in the film that frequently cause the audience to at first be in a state of shock and then burst out into boisterous laughter. It is a rather bizarre thing to witness. In a way, the humor is sophisticated enough that it isn’t beating the punch lines over your head, so in many ways you are not exactly sure what is supposed to be funny so you are both simultaneously confused and amused by the situations occurring throughout the film.

Now that the film has finally begun playing in wide release, I highly recommend that you venture out to the movie theater to check it out, and do not waste your money on such frivolous romps such as Beerfest, or Accepted.

There sure are a lot of better movies out there right now. But, this one is not that bad.

There is not a whole lot that can be said about this film. Basically, the title explains it all. Basically, the film is about a couple of guys who made a trip to Germany to spread the ashes of their father. This trip leads them from the “tame” Oktoberfest (sp), to the more surreal Beerfest that takes place in the German underground.

Upon their first visit they are destroyed by the defending German champions of the contest that happen to be their cousins. They return home, and gather a team of the best beer games people they know and begin training for the following year’s Beerfest.

The film is relatively low brow, but it did mostly stay away from the pathetic humor that I was expecting (flatulence jokes, etc…). I would say more of the jokes tend towards the “frat boy” style.

The film was ok, and if you are into drinking heavily, or did so in college it would probably be a good time.