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Reviews
Jesse James Is a Dead Man (2009)
Staged. Sorry, Jesse, it's obvious
I'll be honest, this show is entertaining in a mindless Spike TV sort of way. It IS fun to watch Jesse James drive something fast and probably wreck it, but...
To anyone with half a brain, the show is staged. Or at least the police chase episode was obviously staged, and to me, that ends it right there. Look, you either bill a show as reality, or you bill it as fiction. Billing a show as having real events and then letting the audience see the rigging and scripting makes this no different than any other "reality" show.
Regarding the police chase episode:
If Jesse James and the police had an agreement to have a chase-off, obviously they would use a controlled course. Obviously during the show, you can see the neighborhood being used as a course is abandoned. However the show never mentions this, it neglects to mention this fact to falsely raise tension.
Also obviously, Jesse James is no idiot or criminal. He would NOT take a dangerous stunt onto a public golf course as was portrayed. If he did, the participating police would instantly go "real" and arrest him on the spot after the first chase.
In the second chase, he "barely misses" a "civilian" vehicle. See the last comment, there is NO WAY Jesse or the police involved or the producers of the show or their lawyers would allow him to endanger any real public. This is a fact so obvious that it instantly calls into question every other aspect of this show.
And finally, when Jesse is eventually spun out and trapped via the PIT maneuver, are you seriously going to tell me a cameraman on foot just HAPPENED to be at the exact place where Jesse's car was spun out and disabled? On a chase that covered an entire abandoned town? Sorry, no.
Finally, the "commander" in the helicopter was so obviously reading scripted lines it made my brain hurt.
I rate this show a 3/10 solely for mindless "Wooooo, burnout!" value. Obviously staged, and it insults the viewers intelligence by trying to pull one over on them in such a poorly done way. Bring back Monster Garage, that was Jesse James in a REAL show.
Demolition Man (1993)
Why the hate?
Im not sure at all why people hate on this movie. In my opinion, it bridges a gap between mindless action movie and satire, and the result is pure gold.
Im not going to write this like a review "Stallone plays John Spartan etc" because you KNOW that. Id rather comment on the movie as it was made.
This movie halfway pokes fun at a 1984 style future, and halfway takes it seriously. And most movies that try to split things down the middle fail on both fronts, well as I see it this one pulls it right off and makes it great. The laughs in the movie don't come from "ha-ha" gags, but rather from biting satire and eerily prescient predictions. Tracking chips, omniprescent surveillance, making cigarettes illegal? Maybe we aren't there yet, but its been heading that way for a long time. It takes a lot to make an audience laugh at a ridiculous setup, then right after the laugh make them think "Wait...That could easily happen!"
The thing that I appreciate most about this movie is the fact that it doesn't forget its own gags. Most other movies, the first time a character was fined for the "Verbal morality statute", the movie would drop the gag, skipping the alarm tone and accusing voice. In this movie, every time someone swears in public within voice distance of whatever it is that "hears" them swear, in the background you hear the gag played out. This transforms it from a joke to a "Holy crap, that would suck" type of mindset, and it works!
And thats what I mean. This movie more than most others that I could name merges satire and a dystopian look with lighthearted gags and "mindless" action scenes. Thats hard to do, and more people should give the writers and director and crew credit for sewing it together and making it play.
One of the few action movies that I watch every time I catch it playing on my TV box, it works that well, and the gags still make you laugh. After all, absurdity is a very real way to highlight and satirize elements of society. It sticks with you longer that way.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Wait, what?
Well. This officially becomes the most idiotically boring piece of crap I've ever seen. Ever.
All the artsy-fartsy reviewers need to clue in to facts. Movies are ENTERTAINMENT. They can be art, and Im the first person to admit that. But you know what you call art for arts sake? BORING CRAP.
I understand nowdays its trendy to go against the basic layout of a story, initiating event, conflict, climax, and all that. But this bucks the trend so much all you end up with is "Nothing happens, and then nothing happens, and then more nothing happens".
You people can spout off about cinematography and shot framing and all that stuff, but you know what those terms really mean? Technical means that support a storyline, and make a film greater than the sum of its parts. Praising a pointless art movie like this one for these things is like praising a computer game with photorealistic graphics that lacks gameplay. All fluff, no meaning.
God I hope one day the artsy-fartsy crowd gets kicked out of movie making. I hope one day the academy awards mean more than pointless art crap. I hope one day a movie that succeeds on all fronts will win awards. But I don't hold out hope when someone can get millions of dollars to put together a pointless piece of crap like this movie.
I can only assume that the director intentionally named this movie "There Will Be Blood" as a satirical joke. Because the only other possibility is that Anderson has completely gone off the rails.
But please. Keep it up. Watching you film school nerds praise a 3 hour long snooze-fest is hilarious. It just shows the rest of us that cluelessness is timeless.
CSI: Miami (2002)
The sci-fi CSI
You know, at least when the original CSI aired, it showed a pretty standard method of crime fighting. Gather the evidence, and figure out whodunnit by hard work and elbow grease.
Then these spinoffs. And Miami is the worst, I call it the sci-fi CSI. In this show, they can find a cellular phone, set it on a piece of plexiglass and some mysterious technology not only accesses the phones memory but displays it on a ludicrous transparent display.
Im sorry, but this show is hilariously bad. I don't mind a realistic show. And I don't mind out-of-this-world sci-fi, but when you try to mix the two you end up with a show that even a 5 year old knows is ludicrous. Either go whole-hog in a realistic format fitting the current time period, or go whole-hog into a sci-fi show, using technology that we wont have for 50 years. Trying to do both is as laughable as Hackers, with 3d flybys as someone hacks a computer.
And please, am I the only one who absolutely hates the YEAHHHHHH at the beginning of every episode? Its as bad as nails on a chalkboard!
Atomic Twister (2002)
Absolutely hilariously bad
Really, this "movie" deserves a 0, but a 1 is passable since most people will get a couple laughs out of the utter inanity of this dog.
Honestly, I saw this piece of trash on a cable network a while back, and the entire plot is so laughable I only remember a few select hilariously bad scenes.
First off, near the end of the flick the "heroes" need to find some diesel fuel to get the nuclear reactor going again. Amusingly, they run RIGHT PAST a diesel fire truck sitting abandoned, and the movie goes into whats supposed to be a suspenseful action scene of the heroes running a random diesel fuel truck off the highway to hijack his cargo, getting into a pointless gun battle in the process.
This is only one of many ridiculously humorous scenes in this travesty of a movie, heres another one.
A heroic red-shirt character needs to save the nuclear power plant, so he sacrifices himself by venturing into the most-protected holy-of-holies in the power plant to shut off some contaminated coolant. Oh....Wait...
This heroic character is plainly just walking into a typical basement, with pipes on the cieling. Because of course, nuclear power plants run their contaminated coolant along the cieleing along with heating ducts, electrical cables, and other building infrastructure. Nooooo, no nuclear power plant separates contaminated pipes from regular old hot and cold water lines....
As a disaster movie, this thing fits. The entire "film" is a disaster from the beginning to the end, but its laughably watchable in the terms of "Oh my god I cant believe someone made this piece of crap"