Reviews

What can I say, I was drawn to this mostly because of The Descendants and the chance of a great Clooney performance in paradise again. That was too much to hope for, however, and this movie definitely failed to deliver.

It's not bad, really. It's just predictable and formulaic and comes off as half movie and have travel promotion for the Indonesian tourism board. But, the scenery is lovely and everyone involved gives perfectly adequate though somewhat uninspiring performances. The ending is painfully obvious 5 minutes in of course, and not much time is really spent establishing the characters (somehow we jump from our young couple falling for each other to planning a wedding with no proposal or screen time for the couple), but it quickly becomes apparent this movie is about Clooney and Roberts and not the young couple that kick the movie off.

All in all, you could do worse when it hits streaming services, but don't expect to be wowed or surprised. And if nothing else it's nice to see Kaitlyn Dever off of pills and doing something with her life after her performance in Dopesick. I like to imagine she got clean, went to college and is now a successful lawyer living in Bali.

I wasn't expecting too much and frankly there are some negatives here. I mean, it's not the least bit original. It's painfully obvious what the outcome will be from about 10 minutes in. Things are formulaic and predictable.

That said, though formulaic it was a great implementation of the formula. Charlie Day gives a solid showing with his typically great comedic timing, but also manages to dial it back a bit and settle into the romance part. The supporting cast also does an excellent job here with solid performances, and the settings and pacing are well done.

But really, Jenny Slate steals the show here. She gives a heartfelt and believable performance, showing some believable vulnerability and a lot of heart. I think her performance is what elevates this from a mediocre romcom to a solid showing.

One could almost give it a pass as a poorly acted coming of age movie for pre-teens. But that's being pretty generous. So many weird choices here... Like why does "spongebob" seem unable to speak in a normal voice? How does a high school principal not recognize a 14 year old student on a "date"? How did the director think setting up a date scenario with a 14 year old and their principal would be funny? How the heck are these not yet 16 year olds driving around and getting into bars with no problem? And the icing on the cake... I'm pretty sure if most of the "romantic" interests in this movie were to work out it would be statutory rape. Overall this movie just tries to insert some fresh out of middle school 14 year olds into "adult" situations, but oddly makes all the male counterparts a solid 4-8 years older... Which, wtf.

I didn't expect much from this film honestly, some laughs and 1.5 hours of entertainment was all I asked. After Holmes and Watson (which my kids and I have not been able to make it more than 25 minutes into) I felt that was the best I could do.

But, this movie surprised. Sure, it opens with Ferrel playing his typical idiot man child, but it goes beyond that to an honestly sincere and inspirational story. The performances are all great, the characters display some depth despite appearing perhaps 1 dimensional at first, and the music is phenomenal (honestly, have been falling asleep the past few nights with songs stuck in my head). The final song (my home town) honestly gives me chills just listening to it.

I'm not a big eurovision fan, I know vaguely of it and have seen some acts from time to time, but that didn't make this less enjoyable. It's not the best movie of course, it still has moments of crude humor (admittedly hilarious at times), but it's beautifully shot and well acted and overall an enjoyable romantic comedy.

It's unfortunate that it was released during a worldwide viral pandemic, as I think this film would do an amazing job for Icelandic tourism otherwise (and I'm sure their contributions to production costs were certainly hoping for this).

What happened to Christina Ricci? She must be hungry. Somehow, appearing in this hot pile of garbage, she manages to deliver an actual decent performance and come off as likeable and adorable, despite the horrible materials he has to work with.

The first 30 seconds of this movie give you a real feel for what you are in for. Pain. However I'll give it an extra star because there are a few gags that actually land and you'll probably have one or two hearty chuckles. And Christina Ricci delivers a solid performance. Actually the supporting cast in general is pretty solid. It just makes it all the more confusing, like how are these people supporting Nick Swardson. In what universe does that even make sense?

Is this movie worth a watch? Not really. But it's kind of amazing to watch just for the sheer fact that it exists...

Such a strange film... I mean the plot is workable for basic romcom. But so many weird choices were made that it's hard to understand what was going through the minds of the people who made this gem.

I'm honestly not sure what the biggest problem was... Was it the over the top New York accents for people in Canada? Was it Hayden Christensen's interesting hair with a horrible dye job? Was it the absurdity of the entire block turning out for a soccer shootout in the pouring rain at night? Was it the over the top caricatures of gay people and Indians?

This could have been a tolerable diversion. But it seems ruined by the director apparently screaming "MORE STERETYPES" at the actors every 30 seconds during filming.

So many good casting choices, even with a run of the mill story like this they could have delivered and enjoyable film. And certainly it had it's moments. Unfortunately the over the top Royal Caribbean marketing made it really hard to think of this as a film and not a 90 minute commercial. I mean I can get behind a little product placement but this is so over the top it's just hard to believe anyone thought it was a good idea. I'm really wondering now how much Royal Caribbean paid for this, maybe they financed the entire movie for how much they were featured.

I watched Rocky Horror live and while it was bad, some of the songs and bits were kinda catchy and it was, at least, watchable. Then they did Grease live and I made it through it but I didn't enjoy it. And then this came along. I made it about 40 minutes and that was only because I was cooking dinner through it and was too busy to turn it off. The acting was just over the top, the songs were too frequent and almost universally terrible. Fox, just stop. Please. I mean I've seen The Room, Troll II and BIrdemic and I'd watch those over this any day! I would even watch all of the Sharknado movies rather than this! Please please please stop making these!

No, it's not terrifying because it will scare you with it's plot, it's terrifying because you know that certain elements of our society actually believe the plot of this movie is a realistic situation that we are headed for any day now. If that doesn't scare you I don't know what will.

I won't go through the plot because it's your standard "global cabal of shadowy figures manipulate the populace and use the UN to take over the USA". OK maybe that's not so standard. You've got almost all of your alt-right buzzwords in here though! The only real surprises are that they somehow forgot to include Muslims as the bad guys. Oh and that they completely randomly and out of nowhere threw in about 3 lines of anti GMO dialog.

Should you watch this? Hell yeah! It's terrible and will leave you shaking your head and laughing the whole time. Bad acting, ridiculous plot lines, what more could you want? On the plus side the cinematography is surprisingly decent (for a movie like this). And there's a special guest appearance by Mr. Alex Jones himself!

Let me start by saying, I am a huge fan of the original Birdemic. I've seen a lot of bad movies. Battlefield Earth is pretty bad. The Room is pretty bad. Manos, The Hands of Fate is pretty bad. Birdemic trumps them all.

And now we have a sequel. Believe me, I was excited to see this. So very very excited, which no one I know understands. But whatever, I know what I like and I like crap. Unfortunately, this movie does not deliver. I'm sorry, but there it is. The major problem you've got here is that this movie is trying way to hard to be as terrible as the first one, and that effort completely ruins it.

It's like William Hung on American Idol. You just can't believe it and are mesmerized by how awful it is. But then he just keeps doing the same thing over and over, milking it for fame and money once he realizes people like that he's terrible. Yes, I'm comparing this movie to William Hung. And yes, like poor Will this sequel has hit the point where it goes from being amusing to just being annoying.

Birdemic failed in essentially every way a movie could fail. The acting was horrible, the camera work dismal, the script was ridiculous, the sound work utterly terrible. I could run out of synonyms for 'bad' just trying to describe the first movie. And that, friends, is what made it great. Here you have a work of art lovingly created by someone and thrust out into the world, and you just cannot believe anyone could create something so awful.

Now imagine that experience, but now it's completely obvious they were trying to make something that awful on purpose. The magic is gone. Birdemic 2 is not so much a sequel, as it is the EXACT same movie but with better sound and camera work. The plot is the same. There are many scenes that are EXACT recreations of scenes in the first movie. In short the movie is, quite obviously, trying to pander to fans of the first movie's unintentional success. It's like watching someone absolutely terrible on American Idol, but then realizing that they're just trying to be terrible on purpose to get attention. It's not the same. The magic is gone.

And, to be honest, decent camera work and sound kind of kills the hilarity. Plus I like Whitney Moore better with long hair...

Really, I watched this because of the title. It sounded like a cheesy B horror movie which is right up my alley. I wasn't expecting much from it, but it was certainly much better than expected.

Overall, I'd say the movie is in the vein of Shaun of the Dead, except with lesbian vampires instead of zombies. Given that premise, most people I tell about this movie look at me funny. OK fine. But, despite the whole idea of lesbian vampires, there is very little nudity (although plenty of scantily clad attractive ladies and a few bare breasts thrown in).

I was impressed with the characters, who although all seem to be complete unknowns did an impressive job. The camera work, dialog, settings and special effects were well above low budget horror standards. The movie was very funny with enough action to keep things going, and enough eye candy to make it fun without turning it into a soft core porn.

No, it's not high brow cinema, but it is FAR from the worst movies I've seen. Despite the title, it has a plot and a lot of very funny moments, and is very watchable.

I had a hard time with this movie. I will concede that the action was pretty good, but overall I found the plot weak and not terribly compelling. Most movies don't bother me, but I had a hard time suspending my disbelief on this one which prevented me from really getting into it. So Dr. Oc has come up with an ingenious fusion device. Ok, no sweat. What I found hard to buy was that for the sheer convenience of his work he just sat down and came up with a set of 4 nearly indestructible metal arms that he wired into his spine, which, by the way, were equipped with super intelligence capable of taking over his brain. This makes absolutely no sense. First of all, the development of such a thing would be equal to that of any fusion device. Secondly, there is absolutely no reason such a device would have to be equipped with super AI. And finally, when he is using it at first it really does not look like he really needs to have these extra intelligent arms. It would have been nice had they done a little more work to introduce the evil arms in a more plausible manner.

The other thing that got me was that Dr. Oc was perfectly willing to do Harry's bidding and bring him spiderman to get some tritium. Ok, come on. You are an evil villian with 4 powerful indestructable arms capable of crushing someone's skull and you are on a crazy rampage to rebuild your fusion reactor with no desire to stop and consider anything else. Would you: A) agree to hunt down spiderman and bring him back to get your tritium or B) start pulling off his fingers one by one until he hands it over. Hmmmmm. This part of the plot (which was quite a major part) made no sense to me at all. The Dr. doesn't care about spiderman, he cares about his fusion, why would he waste time chasing spiderman around?

Finally, the science here was a bit sketchy. Tritium, of which it was critical to have for use in the fusion reactor (this part is true), is supposedly very rare and only 25 lbs of it exist on earth. Ok... Tritium is not rare and occurs natrually or can be produced in a nuclear reactor. Do you have a glow in the dark watch? Hey, that probably has tritium in it. See any exit signs that glow? Those have tritium in them too. I know, it's just a movie, but still... They could have at least made up something he needed to make it a bit more believable.

Finally, the acting in this movie was a bit sub par. James Franco as Harry is not the least bit believable, come on who buys him as a powerful intelligent leader of a major research company? The Dr. himself seemed a bit over the top. Toby did ok, however some of the dialogue he was fed was dripping with cheese and there is only so much you can do with that.

Overall, it was ok if you can easily suspend your belief. Personally I would have rather waited until it came out on video and saved some money.

This is a very strange movie. I'm not even sure that I can accurately describe the plot, because it doesn't make any sense and I don't know if it's really a plot anyway. But I'll give it a shot. I rented this based on the quotes on the box, which described it as being like Total Recall, only with 10 times the weirdness. After seeing the movie, I don't know what they were talking about... The whole movie is narrated by David Blair in a very monotone voice, and has no similarities to Total Recall that I see...

The movie starts out with James Maker, who is a member of something called the Supernormal Film Society whos goal is to film the spirits of the dead walking among the living. There's some background on this which seems largely irrelevant. Then we meet his grandson, Jacob Maker who is the main character of this story. Jacob is a programmer who works on aircraft simulation programs. He's also a beekeeper of Mesopotamian bees he inherited from his grandfather.

So, after a bit the bees drill a hole in his head and put in a television, which the bees use to start showing him things. About this time, a statue of Kane outside his house kills the statue of Able, and Kane is marked with the X symbol. Then at work, Jacob wonders why his co-workers never wonder what happens to the missiles they launch that don't come back (never mind that a programmer probably doesn't deal with missile launches), and he realizes that they turn into flying saucers which fly to the moon where the dead live.

About this time, the bees start showing him things on the television and he makes a big pilgrimage to the Garden of Eden Cave which the bees tell him is the entrance to the world of the dead. Jacob then realizes that the bees are actually the dead of the future, and goes to the cave. Although it is a 40 miles walk through the desert, he makes the journey a bit easier by becoming a bomb part of the way. He then learns that he has to kill someone to fulfill his destiny, which is to be reborn in a wax body that the bees make in the cave.

When arriving at the cave, Jacob learns that the cave is actually the entrance to a planet inside of our planet where the bees live. There, he dies and goes to join the world of the dead. For a while, he becomes the X symbol. Then he becomes a poem in the language of Kane. Then he travels to some other planets, including the Planet of Television. Next he becomes a rival beekeeper of his grandfather. Then he decides it's time to fulfill his destiny, which is to kill someone. So, he becomes a bomb and blows up two Iraqi soldiers in a tank. Then he becomes the X symbol with himself, his grandfather's arch enemy, and the two soldiers he blew up.

And that's pretty much it... Make sense? No, I didn't think so... David Blair calls this Independent Electronic Cinema. I don't know what to call it. I can't figure out if this movie is bad because the weirdness of it all is hard to get over. And the filming is worse... One could today make this movie on a home PC fairly easy. There are 3 distinct types of footage in the movie. First, there is a lot of stock footage of bees, bombs, and other scenes. Second, there is footage that was shot with an amateur camera I'm guessing. Third, there were digital renderings. Nothing fancy, these were things like 3D letters and symbols, and renderings of the cave ceiling and floor just on the screen with a black background.

And it's heavily edited. I hesitate to refer to this as special effects, as I think it's overly abused. There is not a point where more than 1 minute goes by without further senseless video effects. Things like the image warping, folding, unraveling into a string, blurring, etc. Basically all the stuff you could do to a movie with a piece of $100 modern software and a video capture card. And it took six years to make. Personally, I don't see what makes this a great art film, as I've seen some reviews and essays claim it is. I think it falls into the trap of being so different and bizarre that people figure it must be artistic. I don't know what the hell it is, and I don't think I ever will. I keep thinking that there must be some meaning in this movie, but I haven't the slightest idea what...

In this move, Aykroyd presents a fresh look at what makes a man tick, his desires, feeling, emotions and passions. Aykroyd plays Clifford Skridlow, a somewhat nerdish college professor who is timid and mildly neruotic. This character speaks to a lot of us as we walk our way through life, often unnoticed and unsatisfied with our interactions with others. Longing for nothing but happiness, we weave our way through the obstacles of life much as Clifford rushes through the quad on the way to class, taunted and laughed at by the students surrounding him. But this isn't just another movie designed to identify with unsatisfied loners.

While enjoying dinner at an Indian Restauraunt (symbolizing the social and cultural diversity of humanity), Clifford is picked out by a local pimp to act as a scapegoat to avoid debt to Mom, of the infamous Mom's Limo Company. How many times have you been picked by those more successful than you to take the blame? It's getting a little to real at this point, as the action picks up it's pace. Clifford must invent an inner personality to cope with the feelings of rejection and hatred, and the character Doctor Detroit is born. He embodies all that Clifford wishes he could be, suave, feared, respected, wealthy, and adored by women. The metal hand on his left arm is a not so subtle attempt to portray the desire of the weak to be strong.

The strong reference to Nietzsche's idea of men rising up from the ashes and becoming a strong race of supermen cannot be ignored at this point, and it's clear that this is more than just a silly comedy. With his newfound alter-ego and inner strength, the doctor conquers evil and saves the day. In a triumphant final speed, the Doctor retires his inner personality encouraging the gathered crowd to be strong and find their own inner selves, while returning to a life of a normal, unknown man.

But what will happen to him? Why did he choose to let his inner self die? Was this a sacrifice, or a lack of courage? What would Nietzsche think about this complex analysis? This movie will leave you asking these any many questions. Highly recommended, especially as an introduction to other great works such as Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.

This was a very bad movie. Now, I am a fan of very bad movies, and I think this one had potential. If they had tried a little harder, this could have been a humorous b grade spoof, along the lines of Attack of the Killer Tomatos or Killer Clowns from Outer Space. But they didn't. The movie was not corny enough to be an entertaining bad horror movie, but was too stupid to be taken seriously as a real horror movie. I wish they had gone one way or another with it, as it turned out pure and utter crap.

I really enjoyed it. I fully expect people not familiar with Vonnegut to get it, but what surprises me is that people who are familiar with his work didn't as well. As with any of his works, I don't think you can read into it too much. Sure, the acting is fake. It's SUPPOSED to be fake! That's the whole point of the movie, it's a look at an author and his creations. The acting is fake because the characters are fake. They did a great job in this light. If you want to try and read some moral point into the movie, go for it, but I would suggest just sitting back and enjoying. The movie was quite humorous at times and overall well done. There are two things that bothered me though. First, Dwayne Hoover's wife was alive in the movie, whereas in the book her suicide was a major influence on Dwayne and part of the motivation for why he is the way he is. Also, the ending of the book featured the author in the bar, observing his creations just like Trout was in the bar interacting with his creations. I think this is a fairly essential point to the book, but the author was completely left out of this scene in the movie. But overall I enjoyed it. I saw it on opening night and there were 6 people in the theater, half of which left midway through. I think those 3 just came because it had Bruce Willis and Nick Nolte in it.