Fuck M:I 3!!!

I am officialy boycotting Fag Boy and Braindead, or as some people call them Cruise and Holmes. Their putrid spawn can get fucked as well the minute it tears it's way out of Katie's turkey baster-fertilized cunt. I say turkey baster because there's just no way I'll beleive that Tommy boy was able to man up and deliver the goods without the help of a plastic cup, a gay mag and 16 seconds spent feverishly masturbating over the sink in the bathroom of the Scientology Celebrity Center.

C'mon, don't Tom and Katie have a right to beleive what they want?? What am I, some kind of fascist?

Fuck you. No and No.

Alright, those two can go drink all the Kool-aid they want, I could give two shits, but there is a war going on now and I'm choosing sides. What war, you may ask? The war between Scietology and people's First Amendment right to criticize, mock and ridicule it however they may choose.

For those of you who don't know about the recent removal of an episode of South Park which satirized Scientology, let me explain. The episode mocked Cruise, Travolta, and the farcical scheme that is the "Church" of Scientology, mainly by clearly and openly stating the bizarre beliefs they have (which are so far beyond ridiculous that South Park simply ran a cartoon showing the story honestly with the disclaimer along the bottom: "THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELEIVE."). These beliefs are not revealed to Scientology believers for something like six years, at which point they have already paid thousands of dollars for their treatments and such.

In response, Cruise extorted Comedy Central by threatening to pull all publicity for M:I 3 airing on Comedy Central unless the rerun of the episode was pulled. The scary thing is that it was. Those cowardly bastards at Comedy Central fucking caved over a little bit of money, and once again sold out against Parker and Stone.

So fuck Comedy Central, too. (Edit: It's Viacom that owns Comedy Central, and they made the decision, so it is they who should be anally raped with a hacksaw.)

While I'm at it, fuck Isaac Hayes, fucking hypocrite slime. Chef is still a great character, though, and as far as I'm concerned that character is Hayes' only justification for ever having been alive. Now that Chef is done for, Hayes may go kill himself in whatever way he pleases.

Sign this petition http://www.geocities.com/chefgate/ to have the episode of South Park reinstated, and don't expect to see a review of and Cruise or Holmes movies on this site (because I'm not seeing another one of ther movies. If you've got balls you'll stand with me on this and help hit Cruise where it hurts.). I don't care if you are a fan of South Park or not, this issue is bigger than that. There are more people trying to control what we see and hear on a daily basis than most of us have any idea. It's time to fight back!

Review: V for Vendetta

"Government should be afraid of it's people, not the other way around."

That line from the movie essentially sums up the main ideology of this film. Frankly, it's an ideology which is as scary to the people of the world as it is to their governments.

The wonderfully bloody hypothesis of this movie is that the mass populace of this modern day (or slightly in the future) possesses 2 things which I believe they don't:

1) The ability to know when they are being bullshitted by fear mongering and by the idea that in order to maintain peace, freedom must be sacrificed.

And,

2) The will to resist in such a situation, coupled with the resolve to join together to overcome complacency and to do what must be done.

The Totalitarian regime in control of England was not placed there by an epic overthrow of Democratic process, but BY the very Democratic process it removed. Frightened citizens gladly gave away their dearest civil liberties for the ability to look away from their problems, with the knowledge that their kindly, fatherly and strong governent would make sure all was right and good in the world. Sound familiar?

Of course it does.

Clear reference to the Bush regime is made, so much so that it need not be discussed here. While I agree with the movie from an ideological standpoint, my grim cynicism knows that if someone blew up the Capitol building tonight at 12 am, and then sent everybody Guy Faulks masks and said, "Meet me in front of the White House a year from today!", that not a God damn person would show up. Those that did actually show up would be bongo tapping, weed smoking liberal pussies who'd get beaten down by the cops faster than you can say Kent State, or they'd be ultra Right-wing scumbags looking to create a Fascist regime of their own.

Oh sure, there'd be lots of talk amongst the vast, politically inactive populace, that is for about a month after the bombing. Then V would be caught and labeled a terrorist. Rupert Murdoch would decide what we think and we'd all stand together as a nation and condemn the enemy while singing "God Bless America" with tears in our eyes for the loss of the innocence which V robbed from us the night of his monstrous, maniacal terrorist act.

Still, it's great to hear such revolutionary talk, even if it falls on deaf ears. V for Vendetta delivers it's message in a rather repetitive, heavy handed way which may make you groan, but if this message is to have the slightest chance of being heard, can it be delivered in any other way? Subtlety, it seems, has about the potency of a fart in a tornado, and the central issues facing our society today are much too easily ignored by those who'd rather not deal with them.

As far as performances go, Weaving was over the top in a grandiose, swashbuckling sort of way
that initilly turned me off but grew on me in no time. As far as Portman, HOLY CROW, that chick can act! She was awesome, freaking terrific.

The violence was a bit light, especially in the opening scene. Where the seriousness of this movie could have been properly stated by a brutal slaughter of the Gestapo-like villains, instead we are given a comic book dipatching which leaves in question whether or not they were all even killed. This is made up for later by V's last stand, during which he demonstrates exemplary knifing. Stabbing a dude on the inner thigh, lifting him horizontally in front of you in the air, then stabbing down with your second knife into his body, driving him to the ground is just fucking beautiful. YES, I applauded when this happened and YES, it was the closest I came to crying in the theatre in a while.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Review: Lord of War

In the 19th century, European man set out to conquer and colonize one of the last great frontiers on Earth: the mighty, untamed continent of Africa. "Civilized" technology, western warfare and white diseases had combined into a juggernaut force, making a prosperous home for Colonists everywhere they had set their feet.

The continent of Africa was different, however. European ways of conquest succeeded, yet efforts to colonize failed. Crops were impossible to grow in the dry soil, and where the soil was healthy, the immune system of the continent, in the form of the Mosquito, thrived. Yellow fever, Cholera, and the greatest killer of them all, Malaria, ravaged the white settlers and stunted the development of the last great branch of the European empire. Stubbornly, colonists hung around as long as they could still hope to turn a profit.

As the 19th century passed into the 20th, the colonies faded one by one, and sovereignty was returned to the Africans. However, they were left impoverished, divided, bitter towards each other due to restrictions imposed by their former occupiers (see Rwanda), and locked in feudal power struggles.

We soon learned that you don't have to rule a continent in order to make enormous profit from it.

This is the message conveyed by this excellent film, Lord of War, starring Nicolas cage as top international gun-runner Yuri Orlov. Working his way up from the bottom, he builds a fortune delivering the means to an end for a world bent on destroying itself.

With humor as biting and dry as the wind swept desert, coupled with a profound sense of desperation for the future of humanity at large, the film delivers with poignancy a message that is gaining strength thanks to numerous great efforts in Hollywood (see also: The Constant Gardener) regarding the numerous ways the world is fucking over Africa for it's own interests.

While treated largely as a comedy by it's marketing (which it is, though it is a black one), I was moved throughout the film and impressed by Cage's handling of the material without going too over the top.

It's message is delivered consistently, yet somehow the viewer is not condescended upon, or beat over the head with the heavy subject matter. Remove all the horrible truth from this movie, and say for a moment that this stuff doesn't actully go on in the real world, and you still have a great movie.

For me, most interesting part of the film comes during the closing of a deal with his brother Vitaly (played by Jared Leto, who challenges YOU to play a better drug addicted Russian from Brighton Beach) by his side. Vitaly has seen some of the horrors of war first hand, horrors that Yuri seems to have had little difficulty shrugging off and dismissing as not his problem. Recovering from drug addiction fueled by the trauma of his memories, Vitaly is in no state to act as the coldhearted businessman his brother needs him to be. Yuri must realize this himself, yet he watches Vitaly, who is the so-called fuckup of the family, going nowhere back in Brooklyn, so he pressures him to take part in this one deal.

The results are tragic. As Yuri is closing the deal for the sale of 2 truckloads of arms, Vitaly is overcome by his conscience. He overpowers a soldier, grabs a hand grenade and pulling the pin, he blows up one of the two trucks. He is immediately gunned down by the other soldiers.

Yuri maintains composure and sits back down at the table with his customer, but now is left with a dilemma. Without a word his customer removes half of his payment from the table. We are left to wonder if Yuri closed the remainder of the deal or not.

At another point, Yuri returns to his Monrovian apartment to find his chief rival arms dealer, tied and gagged and surrounded by the President of Liberia and his henchmen. The sadistic President urges Yuri to shoot the man in the head, yet Yuri is unable. The President grabs Yuri's arm, holding his finger to the trigger, telling him: "Say the word and I'll release him." Yuri, unable to pull the trigger himself, is equally unwilling to let his rival free by saying those words. The Liberian presses Yuri's finger as Yuri turns his head away, and the arms dealer is shot in the head.

The implication of this is clear. Yuri has contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, yet absolves himself because since he has never pulled the trigger, he therefore is not a killer. Now, given the choice to let his enemy go free, his is unwilling, yet he cannot pull the trigger himself and bear the burden of guilt. His entire life is built on this coping mechanism. Without it, he, like his brother Vitaly, would be utterly unable to function. Now it has been challenged at the deepest level.

In the end, Yuri escapes the clutches of the "law", who's name is Valentine (played well by Ethan Hawke), who in his world is as impotent as a gun without a bullet, though he is left by his wife and son, and disowned by his family because of his little brother's death.

The consequence for him has been the discovery of a conscience and the burden of guilt for his actions, yet in the end he continues on with his lucrative career. Why? Because he's good at it. He needs no other reason. After all he has seen and done and lost, Yuri Orlov emerges as a man who went to war with his conscience, and won.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Review: Kingdom of Heaven

I have to admit I enjoyed this one a whole lot, and I was not expecting to.

I heard a lot of mixed opinions, and was myself weary of sitting through yet another lukewarm "historical" epic monster of a movie with little substance to it beyond the 10,000 CGI rendered soldiers marching into battle.

I'm also not a big fan of Orlando Bloom, and I had serious doubts that he could carry the hefty 145 minute length of this film. He managed surprisingly well, however, though he was not the film's greatest strength.

That strength lied in the masterful direction of Ridley Scott, who is probably the main reason I even gave this movie a chance. The plot is patiently developed, and we are given a firm understanding of the careful relationship between Muslims and Christians in the holy city of Jerusalem, the machinations of Theocracy and the bricks that pave the path to war.

I was unable to pay as much attention as was needed in order to keep up with some of the finer plot points. This is not due to lack of interest, but due to the fact that my 19 month old son was either tugging on my arms or dancing a jig in front of the t.v. for some large stretches of time. If you don't pay attention, you do miss stuff.

Then there was the action.

The battle scenes, while not as frequent as some might hope, were striking in their realism and breathtaking in their scope. From the slaying of the priest by Bloom (which is maybe one of the greatest on-screen deaths ever) in the very beginning, to the seige of Jerusalem at the climax of the film, which puts The Return of the King to shame, few movies have ever done real violence better.

All this was compimented by a supporting cast that easily outshined the competant Bloom. Among them, Ghassan Massoud as Saladin, the commander of the Muslim armies was the clear standout. Piercing like a hawk, he oozed charisma and made every scene not just interesting, but riveting. One of my main beefs with this movie his lack of developement as a character. The film could've withstood 10 minutes less of Bloom and 10 more minutes of him.

Jeremy Irons deserves praise as well for his wise and weary commander Tiberias, one of the few men of reason in Jerusalem. Even Hamish from Braveheart was good, but just once I'd like to watch an historical war epic that doesn't have him in it. Eva Green (Sibylla) from The Dreamers was decent, although we did not get to see a close up of her vagina this time. Liam Neeson was just rehashing Quai-gong or whatever his name was in Star Wars.

In conclusion, this one is definitely worth watching, though I would not say it's vital. It does slow down in the middle, but if the plot doesn't hold your interest, at least stick around for the awesome battle at the end.

Rating: 7 out of 10

50 movies I really like in the order I thought of them.

1. Unforgiven
2. The Shawshank Redemption
3. Blade Runner (Director's Cut)
4. The House of Sand and Fog
5. A Bronx Tale
6. Stuck on you
7. Goodfellas
8. Sideways
9. Ong-Bak, the Thai Warrior
10. Old School
11. The Usual Suspects
12. Sling Blade
13. Saving Private Ryan
14. Apocalypse Now
15. The Sixth Sense
16. In the Name of the Father
17. Tombstone
18. Full Metal Jacket
19. Office Space
20. The Road Warrior
21. UHF
22. Fargo
23. Jacob's Ladder
24. The Sweet Smell of Success
25. True Romance
26. The Professional
27. Taxi Driver
28. The Truman Show
29. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
30. The Godfather
31. The Godfather part II
32. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
33. Cool Hand Luke
34. Ran
35. Hana-bi (Fireworks)
36. Akira
37. Pulp Fiction
38. Pet Semetary
39. Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman
40. The Terminator
41. Galaxy Quest
42. The Matrix
43. From Russia with Love
44. Reservoir Dogs
45. Pale Rider
46. 12 Angry Men
47. Desperado
48. Above the Law
49. Brother
50. Audition

Review: The Core

The glamorous Aaron Eckhart and the super hunky Hillary Swank ride inside a giant penis headed towards the center of the Earth, hilarity ensues.

Hard to know where to start with this one. Frankly, it's bad. What can I really say about a movie so bad that it made me wish I was watching Armageddon?

Okay, maybe that's not true. I'd sooner sit through a 10 hour PBS maraton of the Lawrence Welk show than watch either of these movies ever again. The Core invokes the tired themes of every disaster movie ever made, and more specifically rips off Armageddon so badly I bet Michael Bay is kicking himself for not taking the opportunity to direct it. Actually, judging by the production value and the quality of the CGI scenes (some little better than Sci-Fi channel movies of the week), I imagine they couldn't afford Bay.

Apart from a ludicrous plot involving some business about the Earth's magnetic field breaking down, (the effects of which are helpfully demonstrated by Eckhart taking a homemade blow torch to a peach and saying "This is the earth without that shield!!!"), we are treated to such brilliant exchanges as this:

"We must be in the wrong place."

"If you were in the wrong place, you would already have been shot."

That's quality. Additionally, Eckhart's usage of the word "nukuler" (pronounced ala G.W. Bush) has put him on my long term shit list. Swank's entry into the film involves her crash landing a space shuttle in the middle of a city, somehow managing to avoid any casualties, while damaging the shuttle only minimally.

I'm not really geeky enough to get into all the bad science, which abounds, and I could go on and on about this and that but I won't. If you need more convincing that this movie sucks it hard, go outside and sit down in the middle of the street to think it over.

Rating: 3 out of 10

My first review: The House of Sand and Fog

I wanted to make this my first review because I still feel that this movie did not get the recognition it deserved. Overshadowed by many critics and the Oscars (which do a great deal to decide what people are actually going to go see) by the mediocre offering of Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River", I feel that this is one of the best major Hollywood releases in a long time.

Adapted from a surely wonderful book, this film shook me to the core. The story is unconventional, and quite mundane on the surface, but this is not a movie about grand heros, epic romances or clashes between good and evil. It is a movie about life, self-interest, and true crisis. The things that make and break people are not earthshattering nor are they newsworthy. They happen quietly and over time. These are the things we are made to see through the awesome storytelling of Perelman's screenplay adaptation.

There are no villains in this film. No protagonists, either. Just two sides, locked in a bitter and strikingly real dispute over the rights to a house which seems to have no easy resolution.

First we have Kathy Niccolo (Connelly), a recovering alcoholic who doesn't clean her kitchen or get up in the morning. Her sole possession of value is in fact the house she lives in, which was left to her by her father who passed away. Her husband left her months ago but she has yet to tell her family. She doesn't open her mail for months, and wakes up one morning with a cop at her door ready to evict her for non-payment of taxes which were mistakenly leveed against her by the county.

She befriends the sympathetic trooper (Eldard) who offers to help her move and with whom she strikes up an affair later on as her situation deteriorates so badly she is forced to live in her car.

On the other half, we have the Behrani family, mother and son led by their patriarch, the indomitable Sir Ben Kingsley. Col. Massoud Emir Behrani has held high station in life. When the Shah of Iran was in power, he was an important man. A man of great means. This fact he has not forgotten, despite having been driven from his homeland by opposition forces when the Shah's rule ended. Now treated in this country like a lowly immigrant laborer by his employers and people around him who formerly (to quote the film) "would not have been allowed to raise their eyes" to him, he holds onto his dignity with a desperate grip.

Now he works two jobs. The first with a road crew, shoveling gravel during the day and working as a cashier at a gas station at night, all the time, scrounging every penny he can in the hopes that he once again will have for his family the beautiful life they experienced in Iran.

When he leaves a day of work with the road crew, he changes into a crisp suit before he returns home and tells his teenage son that he works for Boeing. They live in a fancy and expensive hotel room, wasting away what is left of their old fortune so that Ismael (Col.'s son) may not know the truth of how much they have fallen.

When Kathy Niccolo's house goes up for auction it is eagerly bought by Behrani, who hopes to sell the house at 4x profit and move his wife and son to a larger home more fitting of their former station in life.

Though noone is truly villainized, at times the viewer may feel more sympathetic to one side or the other. Yet under it all lies the inescapable reality that neither side is wrong. The wants and the needs they feel are natural, driving forces behind all human action. The need for shelter, the need for tradition, the need to protect inadequecies and the need to be loved.

Both sides are really one and the same, a fact which they both come to realize in one of the most well acted scenes ever, when Kathy attempts to kill herself sitting in her car outside Behrani's/her home. Connelly's acting, here in particular, is just magnificent, in this scene actually managing to shine as bright as Kingsley. The combination of their performances together brought me to tears, even during many repeated viewings. This scene (for me) actually outshines the powerful climax (which I will not spoil), and is possibly the most important part of the movie. It is here that the overwhelming humanity of both characters comes to full bloom, and they become one and the same. No longer adversaries bickering over a plot of land or some unseen prize (which up until that point had been exclusively how one viewed the other). For a brief time, it is their house. Their home, their crisis.

The minimal supporting cast is very strong, even Eldard who usually bothers me is at his best here. Shohreh Aghdashloo, who plays Ms. Behrani, has to be seen to appreciate the subtle, brilliant performance she effortlessly provides.

The only flaw, and this may be nitpicking but so be it, is during Kingsley's most empassioned moment right near then end. He is stricken with grief so mightily that he has fallen on his knees to pray desperately to Allah. Though it is most moving and effective, this scene asks us to beleive that an Iranian man who is in his most desperate hour of need, would cry out to his God in English, rather than in his native tongue. Kingsley's acting skill is quite possibly unrivaled, and I surely can beleive that he could have learned enough Arabic to carry this scene the way it should have been played. I then fault Perelman, for at best not having this flaw occur to him, or at worst deciding to be more friendly to his audience by not forcing them to endure subtitles.

None of the slight flaws dull the radiance of this film. House of Sand and Fog stabs deep into the heart of human issues and will not leave the viewer unaffected.

Rating: 9 out of 10

I hate Michael Bay.

Not only do I hate him, I hate his parents for committing the sleazy, barnyard incest that most surely must have occurred for this man to have spawned. I especially hate whoever it is that let Michael Bay suck his cock and eat his hot lunch in exchange for giving Bay his "big break".

Here's 6 reasons why:

1. He makes crappy movies

This of course is a given but is the root of my hatred.

2. The Hero Shot

Ever notice how there are at least a dozen shots in any given movie of his that are centered from around knee level to frame the hero, or heroes (as is often the case) from a nauseating, nosehair revealing angle? If there is anyone walking, then it's usually in slow-mo also.

Obviously, this cheesy manuever is meant to give the actors a larger than life appearance (they ARE moviestars, after all.) . It is however, also meant to cow the dumbshit viewer (hey, I'VE never paid $10.50 to watch one of these shitfests in the theatre, nor have I ever rented one, so screw you if you did.) with the HUGENESS of the movie and to heighten the importance of characters that anyone with half a brain should not give a flying fuck about. Bay is saying "Hey! Listen up, dumbfuck, this scene is important and the stakes are VERY high!!!"

3. Constant Panning

Like a 7 year old with ADHD who has stolen his parents digital camcorder, Bay is seemingly unable to keep a steady shot. This highly stylized technique is the result of him being artistically unable to use a steady frame to create passable cinematography. Watch one of his movies. Anytime the camera is fixed (and not pointing up from the ground), the cinematography is decidedly lack-luster.

By keeping things moving so fast, he dumbfounds the lowest common denominator viewership, which is of course his primary target and sole cash cow, with vertigo inducing pepsi commercial camera work.

4. He always uses the same shitty actors

I used to like Steve Buscemi. That was back when the only movie of his I'd seen was Fargo (THAT was a great fucking movie with cinematography of the highest order). Even after I saw "Imma-crap-on" (you know, the one where God answers my prayers and sends a giant asteroid to kill Michael Bay), I still liked Steve Buscemi, though perhaps I respected him less. Since my wife forced me to watch the "Island" (I can't think of a funny name for that one) I have one question:

Can we get somebody else to play "Quirky, perverted weirdo" in your next shitfest???

Then there's Michael Clarke Duncan. Black actors complain that there's no work for them, and that's because Bay will only hire Duncan to play "Huge, but sensitive and non-threatening, Black dude".

Ben Affleck...don't get me fucking started. I haven't seen "Pearl Necklace Harbor". I refuse to sink that low.

5. His movies look so goddamn polished

As if every scene is airbrushed within an inch of it's life, the polarized and color-enhanced shots give all his movies a sense of otherworldlyness that is once again designed to awe the retarded, but in reality succeeds only in taking the discerning viewer further out of touch with whatever the hell it is that's supposed to be going on.

6. This shit makes money

LOTS and LOTS of money. People actually go and see these movies in numbers great enough to make Bay a kajillionaire when true genius like Vadim Perelman (see my upcoming "House of Sand and Fog" review) goes largely unnoticed by the American veiwing audience.

What am I looking at?

Good question!

This is my attempt to convince the world of my correctness about all things film, thinly veiled as an attempt to be an amateur movie reviewer.