Rick's World

On Friday, I saw the movie 'Ghost Rider'. To my great surprise, my brother, the guy who hates comic book movies, actually suggested this movie.

I have to say that the first half hour or so of this movie were downright painful to watch. I swear, I've never seen worse acting in my life! Ugh. Things were a bit slow to get started. Once things got going, though the movie was pretty good. The CGI effects on Ghost Rider were pretty good, although I thought the skull and bones parts they showed looked very fake. The fire effects were quite good. The story, such as it was, was pretty entertaining and Eva Mendez showed a lot of cleavage in the movie (always a good thing). I was surprised to not see the Stan Lee cameo in the movie... Maybe I just missed it, but he's usually in all Marvel movies. I'll have to watch it again on video and see if I can find him... Maybe it was just a very subtle scene.

In short, it was your typical comic book movie. Entertaining in a mindless way.

This past weekend, I saw the movie Pan's Labyrinth. I thought I'd give my thoughts on it.

First of all, let me say that the entire movie was in Spanish, not English. Apparently it's a movie made in Spain that they released here with subtitles. I really hate it when they release movies in America that are in foreign languages, but they never TELL you that it's in a foreign language! I've been to several movies like this. Normally, I'll just walk out as soon as I realize it's not in English and get my money back. I want to enjoy a movie, not 'read' it! This one, however was different. I actually stayed and watched the whole movie. Despite the language barrier, I found it interesting enough to keep watching.

My impression, going into the movie was that this was going to be a serious fantasy movie. Lots of odd looking monsters, and wild sets. It turns out I was wrong. There's actually very little fantasy in it. There were only 2 fantasy characters in the entire movie. It was more of a war movie. The story centers around a young girl who moves with her mother into the home of her mother's new husband, who's a general in the army. The girl's real father recently died and she doesn't like this new father. It turns out she has good reason not to like him. In my opinion he was a cruel, jerk. There are scenes of the father outright torturing and killing prisoners.

The fantasy parts come into play because the girl is supposedly a princess from a fantasy land reincarnated into the real world. Pan, the fawn comes to her and sends her on several missions to prove she's the princess so she can return to her kingdom. This all happens at the same time as her pregnant and very sick mother is dying. She's trying to care for her mother and go on these missions without giving anything away. Most of the time she encounters these fantasy characters only when she's alone. At one point though, she does encounter one while someone else is there and they don't seem to see the character. This, combined with the ending leads you to wonder whether any of these fantasy aspects ever really happened or she was just imagining them.

All in all, I have to say that this was a pretty good movie. It is definately NOT a kids movie though. It is very violent at points and not something you'd want your kids to see.

Thanks to my friend Dave, for pointing me to this new trailer for the upcoming Transformers movie.

I'm going to have to do another big review (with pictures!) of this trailer later tonight...

Yes, I went and saw the movie with the dancing, animated penguins...

This past weekend I saw the movie Happy Feet. For the most part, I gotta say I liked it. The animation was fantastic. It has some of the best computer animated graphics that I've ever seen outside of a Pixar movie. It also had it's funny moments. The humor wasn't quite on the level of a Pixar movie, but it was quite entertaining. It also had some great musical numbers in it. It was also the first CGI movie that I've ever seen that was able to flawlessly combine CGI characters with real life characters. The only thing I didn't like was the ending.

The whole story of the movie revolves around a colony of penguins who are starving to death because something is causing all the fish they eat to disappear. It turns out that it's humans overfishing their environment that is causing this. One of the penguins sets out to find the cause of the loss of their fish, ends up locating the humans and follows them all the way from the South Pole in an attempt to stop them. He ends up getting captured and put in a penguin exhibit at the zoo. It's here that he gets the humans attention. Somehow they decide to send him home and after seeing a big dance number by the penguins, the humans are amazed and decide to stop fishing there. All the fish come back and they live happily ever after. Give me a break. Yeah, I know this is just a movie, but I found the ending absurd and at times a bit creepy.

If you removed the absurd ending and came up with something a bit more believable, I would have truly had no complaints. The movie is still worth watching, though, as long as you can ignore the 'environmentalist wacko' ending.

I just got back from seeing this movie. I have never been more insulted by a movie in my entire life.

I won't summarize this movie. You can read the link attached to this blog for that. Suffice it to say that this movie was the stupidest, most insulting, and offensive movie I've ever seen. Yes, I laughed at times in the movie, but taken on a whole this is the biggest pile of shit I have ever seen. This movie intentionally goes for the most insulting, low-brow jokes you could possibly squeeze into the shortest amount of time. We get everything from Jew jokes, to rapist jokes, to incest jokes, to gay jokes. At one point, this movie even devolves into what I would consider child pornography. Then of course you have the fight between two naked, hairy guys that eventually devolves into a streaking scene. I was embarrassed to even be sitting in the theater watching this steaming pile of crap, especially during the child pornography and naked, hairy guy fight scenes. (I almost walked out of the theater at that point).

I didn't think low-brow humor could get any lower. Boy, was I wrong. This movie is so idiotic, it is at times painful to watch.

And what is even worse, is this pile of offensive filth was showing in a packed theater and no doubt will make a fortune. What has this country come to that they think this shit is funny?

I must confess, I was hesitent to see this movie. I was hesitent for several reasons.. First, I felt it was in poor taste to try to profit off of the horrible events of 9/11. Those were horrible events that I will never forget. Second, knowing the director who made this movie - Oliver Stone, I very much expected a very polically slanted movie. Stone tends to make very controversial movies. I was very much expecting a very anti-war, anti-American movie. Thankfully that was not the case.

I saw this movie this past Saturday. The theater was packed. There were so many people in the theater that there was no room for a 'safety seat' between me and the bro. Nearly every seat was taken. The movie centers on the true story of two New York Port Authority cops who were called to the World Trade Center right after the first building was hit. While they were inside the building, the entire building collapsed on top of them, buring them in the rubble. They were the only two of their unit who survived, even though they were buried and unable to move. All they could do was lie there and talk to each other, while waiting for someone to find them. Most of the movie consists of the two buried cops talking with each other. At the same time, the movie regularly breaks off to show their families reactions to the attack and collapse of the towers, and their obvious worry when their husbands go missing. Eventually, they do get found and rescued.

I was very pleased to see that this movie was not politically slanted at all. It was simply the collapse of the towers, and the two cops trying to survive, while buried in the rubble. I was also very pleased to see that they never actually showed the towers collapsing or either plane hitting the towers. All this was shown in a very indirect way. All you really saw of the tower collapse was a view out the window of some rubble. Then they run and then everything goes dark. For the planes, neither is shown at all. At best we see a shadow of a plane fly over head. Yes there are some views of the families watching the burning towers on TV, but that's about it. I felt it was a very tasteful way to depict these events. As it was, the movie was very emotional. I heard many people in the audience crying. I think had they actually shown the towers getting hit and collapsing, it would have been too much for many peole. It was a very good movie. I will not be buying the DVD though. Why? The events of 9/11 were traumatic enough. I don't want to subject myself to this again.

In short: "Girl Power!" horror movie.

This past Wednesday, I got a chance to attend an early showing of the movie 'The Descent'. It was a free preview showing of the movie hosted by a local radio station. I got the pass to see this movie from a friend of mine.

I don't go to see horror movies much. Why? Is it because horror movies scare me? No. Quite the opposite. They bore me. They are all the same. It's just a bunch of BOO! moments. You know what I mean... It's those sudden moments in the movie where some scene sneaks up on you, yells BOO! and scares you. The problem with most horror movies is that these BOO! moments are so blatantly obvious that you can see them coming a mile off. This movie was one of those movies. Except for one scene that got me, the rest were so blatantly obvious that they didn't scare me at all. There's only been a couple of horror movies (Seven, and Final Destination) that really managed to pull off these scary moments. Most fail miserably. This one failed as well.

What is the movie about? It's the story of six women who get together to explore an underground cave system. These women are a bunch of 'adventure junkies' who get together every year for some kind of adventure trip. Why do I call it the 'Girl Power!' movie? Because I swear, except for the first 5 minutes of the movie, I did not see one guy in the entire movie! (Unless you count the male 'bat-people' they encounter in the caves). Once they go down into the caves, a cave-in traps them underground and they have to find another way out. Unfortunately the cave system they are in is completely unmapped and unknown. So they proceed to get lost underground. They struggle to survive on dwindling supplies as they search for a way out. Eventually they discover they are being watched. There is a race of pale white 'bat-people' who live in the caves who attack and kill anyone who comes in there. It ends up as a great chase through the dark caves as they are pursued by these bat-people. It's kill or be killed. You get to see how these girls go from wimpy to tough as they fight for survival.

All in all, I'd call this a typical, dull horror movie.

Last night, I went and saw the movie 'Monster House'. It's yet another computer animated movie. There seem to be a lot of these coming out lately. Some good, some bad. In my opinion, most of them bad. Pixar is the rare exception. What did I think of this particular movie? It was OK. This movie tells the story of three kids who discover that the house across the street is haunted and has been eating people. I have to say that while this movie seems very much aimed at young kinds, it does have some scenes that could be quite scary to children. The house, when it really starts 'monster-ing out' is quite scary looking. Maybe that's why the characters in the movie all look very cartoon-ish - to contrast with the very scary looking house. It had a few funny moments, but all in all, I'd say this movie is more for kids than adults.

"People should not be afraid of the government.
The government should be afraid of the people."

That is the tagline of the movie 'V for Vendetta' and an appropriate one it is too, especially in this day and age.

The movie tells the story of a terrorist named 'V' who sets out to topple an oppressive government. This oppressive government, in this movie is the government of England. However, some of the things it shows this government doing bring to mind such stories as '1984' and even many of the events of today. In this movie, we see the persecution of homosexuals, we see the banning of many books and artwork. We see the controlling of the media. We see the government staging tragedies to affect change of opinion. We see totalitarian governments use this manipulation to take over.

These scenes very much bring to mind some of the things we are seeing today, though to a much lesser degree. We see the Bush Administration campaigning against gay marriage, we see books and artwork being banned in our schools. We hear conspiracy theories that the government staged 9/11. All these things we encounter in the world today are amplified in this story. This story is scary in a sense because it takes what we already see today and simply amplifies it to a very possible future. That happens in this movie could very well happen today. In fact, in some countries, such as Iran, North Korea and China, we already see these things.

This movie, like few others before it has the ability to really make you think about the world we live in and where it is going. These are the kind of movies I like. It doesn't have to have a lot of brainless action to interest me. Movies like this, and Gattaca (a movie about 'perfect people') really make you think about what the future may hold.

Today I'm going to do something different. I'm going to review a movie trailer for the new Spiderman 3 movie. Why? Because, as I mentioned in my previous blog, there is a lot in this short 2 minute trailer. It actually provides a lot of information as to what is going to be in this movie, if you know what to look for. Since I've been reading Spiderman comics for over 20 years, I was able to notice a lot in this trailer that other might have missed. So, I thought I would explain (and show!) what I saw...

Based upon the scenes in this movie, here is my best guess as to the plot of the movie.

Peter and Mary Jane have been dating for a while. Peter decides to ask her to marry him. He goes out and buys an engagement ring. Right as he is about to ask her to marry him, he somehow encounters the black costume. The costume flows over his red and blue costume, replacing it with the black costume we see in the trailer. He goes about being Spiderman in this new black costume, thinking nothing is different. It turns out that the costume is affecting his mind. This leads him to stray from Mary Jane. He meets Gwen Stacy and has a romance with her. Mary Jane finds out and they have a big argument/breakup. Somewhere along the way the new Green Goblin and the Sandman make appearances. No doubt there will be a few scenes of the black costume Spiderman fighting them. Later, he discovers that the costume is controlling him and discovers that sound waves can kill it. He heads to the church bell tower and stands there while the bells go off. The costume supposedly dies. He leaves. Eddie Brock, who was also in the church, below the bell tower, finds the injured costume. They join together and become Venom. This leads to a climactic battle between Spiderman, back in the red and blue costume, versus Venom (and maybe Green Goblin and Sandman too). He fights and wins. He returns to Mary Jane and explains everything. They make up and he proposes to her. The movie ends with the two of them getting married.

How's that for a complete analysis of a 2 minute trailer? It should be interesting to see how close I was to the truth when this movie comes out a year from now.

Update: You can find my other Spiderman 3 entries here and here...

Update 2: I've seen the movie! You can read my followup on this article and see how well I did on my predictions. You can also read my full (long!) movie review.