Reviews

Kevin Smith, if you are reading this, then recognize how hard it is for me to say this: Red State isn't perfect, but it's got enough good ideas going for it, that it makes what could have been average seem slightly better, and I didn't enjoy watching it as much as I wanted to, but I am glad I did see it.

For Everybody else, Red State follows three kids, all generic no-names, who find a website that allows them to find women who are more than willing to fool around. As such, they set out to meet with said stranger, finding out the next day that the person that has drugged and is holding them captive is actually Abin Cooper's Five Points Church, a cult based off of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church from Kansas.

The movie has an intro, a middle and an end, and it's sad to say that both the middle and intro lack so much character and definition from Smith's previous movies that if you didn't recognize it was a Kevin Smith film from the beginning, you'd assume it was some random pulp exploitation picture made by a bunch of no names starring Melissa Leo, Michael Parks and John Goodman and a bunch of kids in movies you've probably never seen.

The movie had so much riding on it, from the moment Kevin announced it, I was on board. I've been a Kevin Smith fan for some time, perhaps not as long as most fans, but I still enjoy his work. However, when he made this movie, it didn't feel as strong as a Kevin Smith film or even a horror film, for that matter.

The villianry of Abin Cooper's flock comes off as silly in some parts, and it's sad that it had to be done in such a cut-paste style of other cult pictures. An Example has a man being executed and one of the members starts chanting, "Send the Sinners straight to hell", and while not a poor delivery, it's so cliché that it took me out of the picture. Not to mention, nearly the entire flock sport accents that sound native to the deep south and again, hearing phrases like, "I'll take care of it, Daddy", seem comical, which is wrong, because it shouldn't be so funny, but it breaks the flow because the accent and the nonchalant delivery makes it seem so average.

None of the characters have backgrounds, being more caricatures than people. The saving graces (A term I use lightly) of the picture are the actors, who do a fine enough job with what is written in front of them. Michael Parks in some scenes tries to act with dialog that's rather wooden, where I get the feeling if he were allowed to ham the performance up, it might have made the character seem more villainous. He does have some moments, such as when he's surrounded by death all around him, Parks makes Abin seem so detached that all he does is remark how the Bible says they did good. Not to mention, a real tense scene with Abin talking to a cop over a radio was the type of evil that really needed to be within the whole picture.

Melissa Leo does as good as she can, most of her scenes have her doing the kind of overacting that made Raul Julia's performance in 1994's "Street Fighter" fantastic.

The film sadly squanders the other actors, John Goodman, Kevin Pollak and Stephen Root do what they can, and of the time they are on screen, they don't do too much.

The problems with the film are simple: if you have a villain that's toted as "so bad, Nazis don't even want to have their politics associated with them", It would help if we got some kind of indicator, instead of lots of talking.

However, the ending is probably going to be the polarizer of the year. I actually like the ending, because of the way Smith ends the picture, it's an ending that people should follow whenever we see the WBC protesting for one reason of another. Short of that, the first two halves of the film don't make the picture seem anything more than generic, the horror isn't horrifying enough and the action is nearly non-existent.

I will say as a Kevin Smith fan, however, don't watch the film expecting "Clerks" or anything living within the View-Askew universe. I recommend it for seeing what an director can do wrong, but what he can do right, All the same, if you saw the movie and didn't like it, I understand entirely why, but if you liked it, I could understand why all the same.

I won't lie when I say that I liked 1990's Dollman. Tim Thomerson running around as Brick Bardo was simply the highlight of what could have been the worst movie in the world, but oddly enough, that movie was filled with enough humor and camp to make a movie that was only a hour and 17 minutes feel like a complete picture, even if one or two parts of the movie kind of slowed everything down.

Now, I cannot speak on the behalf of either "Bad Channels" or "Demonic Toys", but all I can say is that if "Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys" is an indicator, "Demonic Toys" would be an insult, but somewhat laughable attempt at trying to cash in on the "Child's Play" series of films from the 80s, and Bad Channels would seem like something of an original idea kind of like how "Dollman" was an original idea.

When I sat down for "Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys", I wasn't expecting anything other than maybe a less than average horror movie with a movie character I would be rooting for to defeat the Chucky Knockoff possessed toys. What I got was a movie that was padded so much, leaves so little explained and a plot that was squandered, which I feel is disrespectful for its target audiences, which would have to be the purists who watch these low budget movies to begin with.

The problem with Versus movies is that for the most part, you have to cover both sides of the tracks for the characters that are going head to head, and you run into the issue of giving away almost all the back story or none of the back story. This movie, unfortunately, pads the entire picture with all three major characters' back stories, With Dollman's back story being the longest, since he actually has more plot and character to work with.

This is insulting for the audience, because if you already know the back story (again, only the fans would watch this sequel because they have seen all the movies), this stuff you just fast-forward, and then you take off what feels about 4 to 5 minutes of film. The film also insults its audience by using lots to tactics to make the movie longer, such as having almost four minute intro credits, four minute out credits, and one very obnoxious long shot of a guard reading a magazine that didn't look like he was reading a magazine so much as it looked like he was...ahem, having "fun" with himself.

The movie also avoids explaining how in the beginning, Dollman was hitching a ride, and the next time we see him, he magically meets Nurse Ginger from "Bad Channels", or how the cop found Nurse Ginger without anything more than a reporter saying she lives in a select town.

The movie is really nothing more than continuous padding, and by the time we get to the versus part of it all, it's so anti-climatic, you almost feel like apologizing to somebody that's not you for wasting the complete hour you used to watch this movie. And let's not even touch on the fact that every one of the Demonic Toys is more obnoxious than Beetlejuice and Drop Dead Fred on a caffeine high. I don't understand how there are fans of the toys, but I know that Chucky is more tolerable than the continuously laughing clown or the baby doll with a potty mouth so lame that George Carlin would have cried in embarrassment over the thought that somebody would find some part of this threatening or even funny.

The movie is an insult to us all. For all the fans of their respectable films, watch those movies over again. At least you know you can honor their films with more respect than this. It doesn't matter whether the film is "Alien Vs. Predator", or "Freddy Vs. Jason", if you watch this versus, it really, really doesn't matter who wins, we all lose.

2/10

I remember the first time I saw the previews for Jonah Hex, and I'm sure you might have seen it too. It had shown, in the brief flashes of a 30 second commercial, a scene where the aforementioned lead is shown, on horseback, cranking the handles of two Gatling guns along the back of a rearing horse. I think people that went into this movie thinking it was going to be a serious picture were probably the same misinformed people who thought a movie like "The Watchmen" was going to be a action packed superhero movie for kids based entirely on the fact that everybody was in costume.

Jonah Hex is a sci-fi western quite unlike any other. In fact, I would be more inclined to think less about The Good, The Bad and The Ugly or Once Upon a Time in the West and more along the lines of Hellboy or The Crow when seeing this movie. The Story begins almost immediately as Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin), tied up outside his home and approached by a villainous Confederate general, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), who we learn, is proclaiming vengeance for the death of his son, kills the only family Hex had, and then branding him with a mark he will never forget.

Supranaturally, Hex dies and is brought back to life by a Native American tribe. Hex, reborn, now has the ability to speak to the dead, and his first order of business; Find and kill Quentin Turnbull.

I will say right now, this movie had no aspirations of being serious. Even in the opening credits, the Warner Brothers logo comes up and the sound of "As Time Goes By" is played on a swaggering guitar more suited for the score of Raising Arizona than a comic book movie, or even a western, for that matter. That should be an indicator that this movie is not going to be a real serious affair. Hell, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World did it to the Universal Logo, and that was a blast.

The film is actually just fine. It's not great, but it's not utterly horrible, and everybody involved seems to do, well, okay, not great, but given the script by Nevaldine and Taylor (Who wrote and directed Gamer and Crank's 1 & 2), What else can you complain about?

The problem with the movie is that it is a cash-in. It has to be, because if anyone truly respected the source material, we would have had more told to us about Jonah himself, or the hooker with a heart of gold, Lilah (Megan Fox from Transformers), or Quentin Turnbull himself. In Fact, Jonah's story in the beginning is told with two minutes of animated visuals, so instead of showing us like a Superhero movie might do, this one tells us. The movie score seems to mix together a traditional western sound in some parts, but it's mostly electric guitar chords, which told me the movie is, again, a cash-in. The problem with this movie is that is was written as a sequel and not as a real origin story. Had the movie been written as a real origin story, We would have seen Jonah Hex develop his abilities as a speaker of the dead instead of telling us; We would have learned how Lilah and Jonah are so comfortable with one another, and we could have understood the story a little bit more and it wouldn't have had to been so frantic in its presentation.

Strangely enough, though I criticize everything wrong with it, I just can't get myself to give it the truly negative review I want to give it. The movie isn't a brain drain, more like a brain shut off; you go in for about 1 hour and 10 minutes and there you go. If nothing else, you killed time watching a steampunk fantasy about a supernatural cowboy and a loyal hooker. I can't think of any movie more deserving of being called a guilty pleasure quite like this one. I certainly couldn't recommend it to anybody without laughing about it, but I enjoyed it enough that on a TV edit, I'd watch it again.

5/10.

Street Fighter is a strange video game movie. The game is an amazing 2D fighter with a wide array of characters from different continents who battle it out for...something.

The Movie, surprisingly, has more plot than you would think. M. Bison (Raul Julia, in his final performance) is now portrayed as a megalomanical super villain who has dreams of causing collapse to the entire world, such as killing a large number of hostages unless paid a ransom worthy of Dr. Evil standards, creating a breed of super soldiers and kidnapping the Queen of England and create his own world based off of his image. Trust me, it is as silly as it sounds.

Lt. Guile (Jean Claude Van Damme) approaches the situation in that he has to save the hostages and hopefully put Bison on ice, once and for all, thus stopping his plans for world domination.

From there on in, the movie is basically an almost two hour fan service with various subplots with almost all the characters from the Street Fighter universe. Zangief and Dee Jay work for M. Bison as Muscle and Computer Technician, respectively. Chun-Li, Balrog and E. Honda are all out for get revenge and Ken and Ryu are professional fighters hoping to score a battle against the vain Vega and evil Sagat.

Like I said, the rest of the movie is nothing short of fan service, since all the actors deliver some truly awful one liners aside, Van Damme's Guile almost sounds like Tommy Wiseau ("The Room") when you close your eyes, and the whole plot itself is actually quite boring.

Well, why in the world would someone defend this movie then? I'll give you three reasons, two are part of the movie, and one is a personal thing.

1. Raul Julia's M. Bison. A villain who looks rather powerful should be given a great performance. While Raul Julia did die after this movie was over, there is no denying that he went out with a bang rather than whimper. His performance is laughably over the top, but at no point do you look at his face and see a man who seems to think he's in a movie, and as a result, he makes the movie quite amazing. If anything, he gives us a theatrical villain which, for his character, works very well.

2. There was a lot of room for potential here. Let's be honest, writing a movie is easy, but writing a good movie is hard. The director (Who is also the writer) took a fighting video game and crafted a movie out of it, and a fairly well done one at that. Sure, not in execution, but in originality, it works.

3. It was a movie from my childhood. I was a child of the 90's, and as such, I can remember my parents letting me watch this at a very young age, and it was awesome. Damn the Nostalgia factor, but it's what makes this movie really good. I can remember how intimidated I was in the final battle scenes, and how cool M. Bison was to me (in that over the top Saturday Morning Cartoon style of cool).

This movie is a very easy one to attack for just not being good, but understand from my point of view, even knowing how bad it is, having no character development, some truly cheesy one liners and awful performances, including Van Damme giving a performance that makes him sound like Tommy Wiseau if he smoked cigarettes for ten years and you closed your eyes real tight, I still like it.

It's cheesy, terrible and ridiculous, but all you need to know is that Raul Julia delivers some of the best lines for years to come, and you know you are dealing with a kind of cult classic when one of the film's greatest lines is, "This is merely superconductor electromagnetism. Surely, you've heard of it." In other words, go see this movie if you haven't already.

7/10.

Before this review starts, I must state that I am an Elm Street fan. I happen to own the first movie twice on two different editions, the fifth movie in Rated and Unrated (DVD and VHS, respectively) and spent an entire evening trying to finish the "Never Sleep Again" documentary about the particular series of movies. It should also be mentioned that not just by a fan's standpoint, but also by a legitimate reviewer's standpoint that this movie is not very good.

The movie's story is familiar, but for the uninitiated, the story is about the killer Freddy Krueger (We are already out of the gate with "Freddy", not "Fred", as he was called in the original) who kills his first victim in, I'm not kidding, the first five minutes, not withstanding credits.

The children of Elm Street start dreaming of a man with horrible burned skin, red and green sweater, and a pair of razor fingers who follows them in their dreams. They seem to figure it out rather quickly that if you fall asleep and die in your dream, you die in real life. Knowing this, they begin many sleepless nights, hoping that the next minute isn't the one where they slumber- eternally, that is.

It can be said nearly from the beginning that the movie tries to incorporate enough of the first movie without trying to be a complete shot-for-shot remake that surprisingly enough, the movie suffers because it doesn't do just that.

The reason why the original worked so much better was that the special effects were truly special, most of them handcrafted. This version resorts to CGI in just about every aspect: The Deaths, Any tricks Freddy pulls off, and I get the feeling a lot of the sets. The original was scary because it didn't really have stages, or a lot of money, so even creating nightmares was, pardon the pun, a nightmare. Here, you can almost feel Michael Bay (Who is producer) having no issue coughing up a cool million to put a new special effect in, even if it's purpose is to brag that it has money to do it.

The Characters also suffer because every one of them is as one-dimensional as cardboard. We have a Nancy, but guess what? Except for drawing, we don't know anything about her. We have newcomers Dean, Jesse and Kris, but we have nothing to make us like them, nothing to dislike them, nothing. In fact, even Freddy suffers from this too, because he's too developed.

This movie brings in a concept that the original movie's director, Wes Craven, chose to drop when he filmed his version, Which was that Freddy was a possible child molester. While this idea has divided fans of the original movie to even vow not to see this remake, I praise the writers and the director for even considering it, but it is just about where my praise wraps up.

Another weak link in this movie is Jackie Earle Haley's Freddy Krueger, who plays the performance scary, but it comes off being lackluster. The special effects are as plain as the nose on your face (or For Freddy's case, the lack thereof) as Freddy's bottom lip almost never moves, his voice carries this aggravating rasp, and his dialog becomes too long.

The original Freddy did talk, of this much we know, but Freddy wasn't given 100 lines in a movie, either. The original Freddy would either yell or tell a one liner, this one carries complete sentences, and it gets old very fast. Jackie Haley's performance, as you listen, sounds more like his performance as Rorschach in 2009's Watchmen, which better used Haley's acting ability instead of this movie using Haley for his familiar voice and not much else.

Another conflict is that the movie is rather lacking in Nightmares, or dreams, which is odd considering that with all the money they had working on this movie, dreams should have been the most explored idea within the picture.

This movie is not good, with the exception of the new Freddy storyline and better actors (They act well, they just haven't got any character traits to make me care for them), this movie could have been called "Freddy's On Elm Street" and at least it would have been more honest than the whole "Nightmare" word in the title.

Because of the poor writing and conception, you could gather this movie was made more to make a buck than to pay respects to the long running series, and because of this, we aren't given a movie that could have been praised with the original, but feels like a parody of the entire series. Let me put it this way: This movie isn't scary, it isn't nightmarish, and it isn't enjoyable. Pretty much the only way to connect to my fellow Elm Street fans is, it's one movie on par with almost three of the original Elm Street movies (The three worst ones, that is).

4/10.

Derrick Comedy have been known over the last couple of years for their offbeat, quirky and sometimes very unorthodox ways of getting a laugh out of its key demographic, which is safe to assume is mostly made up of teenagers, mostly boys, but it would be wrong of me to think girls weren't fans too.

After a comedy group becomes big, it becomes the norm to create some kind of outlet to show your fans how much you love them, and what better way than to create a movie. Lorne Michaels and the Saturday Night Live "Not yet ready for Prime Time Players" did it, Monty Python did it, and while we have yet to see the Whitest Kids U' Know touch base with us on that (and no, Miss March does not count), we have "Mystery Team", a very clever, sometimes bordering on outright disgusting movie.

Picture if you will, The Hardy Boys trying to hide their own 5 O'clock shadows from each other or Encyclopedia Brown trying to figure out what exactly happened to the punch bowl at the high school dance, and you could kind of place what this movie is trying to be.

Three kids, who dubbed themselves the Mystery Team as kids, solve the town's big mysteries, like where is the missing cat, or who shoved their finger into a fresh baked pie, but get handed their biggest mystery when a young girl asks the team to find out who murdered her parents.

Of course, the guys get involved and approach this situation as serious as a heart attack. On the surface, this movie might sound cliché and familiar, ala the Andy Samberg 2006 picture, Hot Rod. However, it would be a disservice to persuade you that they are the same movie. While they are similar in many ways, Mystery Team has something that feels a little more genuine. Hot Rod had a character who thought he could do it all, and the movie had many over the top scenes. Mystery Team is grounded in enough reality to make you realize that none of this could be pulled off by a couple of less than street wise kid detectives, and the movie makes you fully aware of it.

However, in this grounding, it makes the characters have some kind of background. Not a fully recognized background, but something for you to work with. Being a handful of high school kids who really never grew up kind of rings funny, but everybody around them knows they are just trying to hold on to whatever youth they have left, a defense mechanism to help themselves prove they are still important.

The movie is met with some flaws, the characters are never truly fleshed out and become more or less, cardboard cutouts of what kids think is heroic, but when you were a kid and you invented you're own persona, did you really think beyond "Super Smart" or "Super Tough"? Even in this case, it still works.

Typical in most comedies too is a joke that doesn't work here and there, but it is for the most part, consistently funny.

I would say if the plot is enough for you or you need a dumb funny laugh, look no further than the Mystery Team.

8/10.

Of the Last Decade of so, Horror had been on a downhill slope in a lot of the movies that have come out. Ever so rarely are we treated to a movie that scares us by what we aren't seeing, or the horrors of what Science, Mankind or any combination of the two can do.

Horror movies have also, sadly, been in the can. With the last few years, Sub-genres have opened up, the ever popular Gore-no, which rhymes with "Porno". These movies are very easy to find; They typically have no real plot to speak of, shocking displays of violence and mostly naked people placed in spots to fulfill the idea that if you are going to sit in a theater for what you've paid for, might as well have a naked woman show up.

From the last couple of months, people have been trying to say that the new controversial Serbian Film, aptly named "A Serbian Film" and (what I'll address as "Srpski Film" to avoid confusion) is either yet another grotesque exercise in showing excessive violence or classified as a movie with Artistic intent. Having finished it, I spent a few hours as this was being prepared to say I haven't got a clue what I'm going to say about it.

The Story follows Milos(h), a former porn star with a young boy and gorgeous wife, who has fallen on some hard times. A Porn Star Milos has worked with, Layla, tells him of an offer to make the adult film of a lifetime from a director named Vukmir. Vukmir is a clever man, well educated of Milos work.

When Milos shows up to perform in something he hasn't even a script to, he refuses. Vukmir, however, is not going to take no for an answer.

This is the part of the movie where the term "Double Edged Sword" comes into play, I think. The question this movie asks you is if the content in the movie is mindless or artistic. The Answer is a difficult one to answer. If you say it's artistic, it almost makes you have to ask the question if you are necessarily Vukmir, who thinks his pornography is artistic itself.

If you say it's garbage, than it almost invokes the question if perhaps you missed some point about the commentary to it all, which people almost all bring up when talking about this movie, and you went in for some awkward blood lust quota that wasn't fulfilled.

In all honesty, it is a movie that cannot be submitted to the star review system of the IMDb. I will say that the movie doesn't have a great plot, all that interesting characters (With the disturbing exception of Vukmir). It is a graphic motion picture, with visuals that will make you feel absolute disgust, but whether you are disgusted with yourself for watching or the cast for filming it is kind of open. Surprisingly, the blood effects aren't in fire-hose mode, in that all the blood we see is almost near the end, which was kind of refreshing.

Although it is a very slow movie. The content we are seeing isn't fast, and the conversation we hear is only so interesting, nothing is really background information on any of the characters (Vukmir and Milos are the only ones with backgrounds) so if you go, it would be because of the horror stuff you might have heard about it. The sex is almost constantly in view, but none of it is erotic, nor is it meant to be. It almost feels like it is kind of a satirical look at the feel of modern pornography.

The Problem comes is where I stand on the movie. If I say I liked it, It's because of the last 20 minutes, which I felt to be the most tense of any movie I've seen in a long while. If I say I hate it, it sounds like I was looking for a ton of blood effects and sex and wasn't satisfied.

I leave it up to you. If the trailers, story or hype sounds like something you want to see, It is your money. It is a difficult thing to say, but I truly think that in order for me to give a final consensus, a second viewing is needed, and I think I won't give this movie a second viewing for awhile.

In this world, there are big men. Big men can be big in stature, ability or a combination of the two. Seeing Peter Dinklage as the character Finn in 2003's The Station Agent, made me realize something: Peter Dinklage is a big man, in both stature and ability, and I almost feel like classifying him as one of my favorite actors of all time (A claim that is difficult for me to say).

Peter Dinklage plays Finn, a man with Dwarfism who works in a model train shop with one of his good friends, who passes away. Finn's best friend leaves in his will, a train depot. Finn takes refuge in the small, but spacious area, and comes across some very unique characters.

Joe (Bobby Cannavale) is a hot dog and coffee vendor who, in his part time takes care of his ill father and tries to make friends with Finn. Olivia (played by the gorgeous Patricia Clarkson) is a woman who just seems to have found friends in Joe and Finn, and it seems to be the best medicine she can get.

What is encountered isn't a movie that challenges anything major, difficult or is particularly risky, but is more or less, an emotional study of people and seclusion. The three characters in the movie are around many people, but they all have some kind of pain held within themselves.

What makes the movie and its use of emotion so great is that it takes the time to help us learn who these people are, instead of spelling it out, and it doesn't seem forced, not even for a second.

When I went into this movie, I was a little bothered with how Dinklage's character was being used. I felt like this movie was going to be rather one note in nature, but the surprise was pleasant, mainly because the movie stopped looking at Finn's height as a focus for the movie and instead evolved the character, to show a man with a fixation for trains, people and communication.

Bobby Cannavale and Patricia Clarkson, as well as some brief, but great scenes with Michelle Williams playing a young and confused librarian and young actress Raven Goodwin playing a little girl named Cleo kept me smiling, but intrigued. The characters are unique without being overly silly, but their problems are real, being the greater part of it all.

I could go outside right now and meet all of these people in the small town I live in and it wouldn't seem silly or ridiculous, as compared to most independent movies where townspeople usually have something odd and quirky about them that takes away from the intrigue of it all.

As I said in the beginning, There are big men in this world, and I consider Peter Dinklage a big man. People might argue that, but I think he is a great actor. Every scene with him in it is amazing. In a world where the roles of actors of short stature are mostly relegated to playing a munchkin character who becomes the punchline for just being on camera, Dinklage can convince anyone that Dwarfs can play just as good leading men, if not better than the average height actors out today.

9/10.

It is very strange that when I read the user reviews of this site, so few actually talk about why the movie is so bad. Well, I'd like to take a moment to say why I didn't, and in better detail than most, hopefully, enjoy the movie.

Dumb and Dumberer is a prequel, which if the word "sequel" is of any indication, means it is a continuation from the first. Well, "Prequel" implies it as a "beginning of" story, sort of what happened in the childhoods of Harry and Lloyd, who were originally played by Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey, respectively.

The characters in the story are Harry and Lloyd, two simple minded teenagers, who lack any real charm or clever idiocy that was played so well in the original. The idea in this movie is that the principal, played by the legendary Eugene Levy (Jim's Dad in American Pie and most of its sequels) is trying to find a get rich quick scheme, so he develops a special needs class to make the money, but he needs students.

If that part of the plot doesn't offend you, don't worry, the rest will.

Harry and Lloyd go on a search to find kids who are just like them, (although its so insulting to think special needs kids can't tell an Asian girl from a mentally handicapped child) and needless to say, a class is formed.

Jessica, a very smart teenage girl (which only implies the entire school isn't smart enough to recognize this plot) sees the ruse, and uses our heroes to dig up the dirt on the principal.

To be honest, if the movie didn't have the "Dumb and Dumber" moniker or even a mentioning of Harry and Lloyd, this movie probably would have faded into obscurity, nary, even been made, and if it did, it might have been a cult classic if it had been better written and not as relying on the first movie's jokes.

The movie has some references to the original picture, but the problem is that references aren't usually funny. So when this movie references the laxative from the original as a large truck carrying said product, it doesn't make it funny, you are just implying that you watched the movie enough to notice it.

The problem with this movie is just lazy writing. The creators probably thought watching enough of the original was a good idea to create a sequel, but what it does is insult anyone who tries really hard to write good comedy with insulting retreads from classic movies.

Harry and Lloyd aren't some kind of smart, they are all kinds of moron. In the original, it is implied they aren't smart, but in reality, it's that their ideas of intelligence is slightly askew from most people, but it was mostly honest mistakes. Lloyd hearing the country Austria and playing it off as Australia is believable, and more than likely a mistake a person has made before, as opposed to say, talking about who Benjamin Franklin is (Where Lloyd explains that Ben Franklin was the "Pilgrim who invented Penicillin and defeated Godzilla").

Critics and most writers will tell you that was is usually funny isn't funny, it's what you play off as serious that's funny. The characters aren't serious people doing funny things, they are played off as funny people doing funny things, and that doesn't always equal funny.

The actors seem rather detached from the project, as if they all simultaneously had a large bill to pay, so they played their appropriate roles just to pay it off to do better movies. It was strange that from the years 2003 and 2005, people thought that making sequels to previous Jim Carrey movies was to be cinematic gold, was actually just copper painted up and advertised as gold.

It is always going to be argued that sequels are never better than their original counterparts, and that's understandable, only so many movies have that bragging right. That doesn't mean if you have an idea for a sequel and you feel strongly in making a sequel that you have to do it poorly in every means possible: in writing, in acting, in character development, music, staffing, ETC. It should be room to improve. A sequel, in particular, a prequel should challenge the audience to see how the characters became who they are when we remember them, not putting them in a less than original story.

This concludes my review, I give it a 2/10.

Freaknik is the Adult Swim 1 hour program that stars rapper T-pain, the rapper notoriously known for his use of Auto Tune throughout his albums.

I can't say I'm a follower in the legion of T-pain fans (I'm classic rock, I have to say) but I do watch a lot of Adult Swim, and unlike most of the shows, I couldn't get myself to miss this.

The story starts when the major character, Freaknik, an Atlanta rapper who was at the top of his game, was arrested and eventually killed (A obvious reference to many famous rappers, who die so mysteriously) but a cool little summoning brings back the spirit of Freaknik, and thus, the voice that is the Auto-Tune sound of T-Pain arises.

The story kind of moves into a rag to riches story that plays by the numbers. It may be an entire hour, but to be honest, it is not the story I was watching it for, because I have seen better; it's the actors, the music and the character, Freaknik.

Again, I am not a rap music enthusiast; In fact, if I had to advocate any rap music, it was everything in the 90s and that was the end of it, and I do not enjoy T-Pain's music, and yet, I was intrigued by it all. T-Pain sounds like a character when he "Raps", so in said case, the Auto Tune voice makes the character seem a little bit more lively.

The actors in the movie are probably the reason I wanted to see this for the most part: You have Snoop Dog, Andy Samberg and Bill Hader, Charlie Murphy, many great celebrity personalities to hear, but most are so underused in this project, Samberg and Hader used for about 3 minutes, Charlie Murphy for about a few seconds, and Snoop Dog for about a minute, all to bring us back to a few characters whose are dull as dishwater, actually.

So, all that leaves to judge is Freaknik, the character, who was actually the best part. The character, a spirit, is actually real lively in speech, and The songs Freaknik does range from the over-excesses of Women, Drinks and Money, to helping strippers getting out of their awful jobs and getting them into college.

This is where the movie excels, and unfortunately, that's as good as it gets. You get a handful of songs and a few chuckles here and there but that's it. It is a picture of little redeemable value.

I think the problem was so much of the ideas were based on T-Pain that everything was given a backseat, so in order to make the movie watchable, it was just up to hiring a few well known rappers to give most a movie part in something.

But, if this were a full length motion picture, I'm sure the story would be better than it is, and honestly, I'd like to see that. Freaknik is interesting character, perhaps in another longer project, just recreate the entire story to make characters who are interesting, not cardboard cutout ghetto characters with no passion or drive, you lose interest too quickly and it shows when the writers really create nothing more than an an overly long party sequence and a troupe of Flying Malcolm X's to wrap up the movie.

So in conclusion, If the character comes back, make it more interesting, let T-Pain do what he does best, and come back with more interesting characters.

A disappointing but brutal 4 out of 10.

I think over a thousand years from now, the people of that time will look back at the history of spoof films, we will find an overabundance of parody films from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2009, and perhaps most of humanity will look at that decade as the poorest excuses for Parody films.

However, in the event that the internet still exists in the future, I hope some people find this review to help them sift through the mountains of waste in the Spoof film genre, and one of those rare few movies would be "The Comebacks".

The Comebacks stars David Koechner (Perhaps most remembered from Anchorman) as Coach Lambeau Fields, a man whose history of poor coaching have earned him the title of "Worst Coach", causing some of the major blunders in sports history (I'm glad Bill Buckner wasn't spared from a joke). After years of failure, an old coach buddy, Freddie Wiseman (Played by none other than Carl Weathers) tells him of a sports team in desperate need of a coach.

Well, it wouldn't be a movie without this plot point being fulfilled, now would it? Coach Fields takes up the team for hopefully his first real chance at coaching a winning team. Everything after this becomes parody fodder shortly thereafter.

With Parody films, it is hard to judge the movie, considering how much of the parodies and jokes you end up giving away in the review. This movie suffers from that, so I'll do the best I can from here.

The movie plays on a lot of tried and true clichés from sports movies, some in situation (An oddly disturbing yet hilarious scene from a character Aceel Tare, whose name gets mispronounced as ACL Tear, provides the "Best player getting injured" Cliché), or in reference (A football team is called "Friday Night Lights") and for the most part, it becomes hit and miss.

However, the problem with most parody films is simply this: Some gags are drawn out to death. One gag in the movie is that a team is called "The Trojans", and they reference Condoms (Product Placement at its finest) and Coach Fields then makes a remark obviously making sex talk about the team. The joke was the team and its name, no need to make intercourse jokes after, it becomes 15 seconds too long and boring, then its called a bad joke.

There is also a lot of filler in this movie, none to make the story work, just to make it nearly an hour and a half so you felt like you watched a movie and not an episode of MadTV starring the actors who couldn't cut it.

However, despite all its negatives, it does have its funny parts, the problem is that they aren't fast enough or strong enough to work. This movie would have worked at an hour, just by cutting out all the filler, all the overstretched jokes and probably a minute and a half of the musical number (Oh, I didn't mention the cast sings "Don't Stop Believin" by Journey because it's a staple of sport films, or that the writers ran out of ideas).

Is it funnier than most parody movies? Yes. Is it the greatest parody movie? Not by a long shot. Watch it on TV. It doesn't hurt like "Meet The Spartans" or "Epic Movie" (Which both rank a "1" and "3" from me, respectively) but there could have been a lot worse about it.

5/10

One of the major rules people should have learned about movies is this: No matter how specific the title is, it may not be what you thought it was going in.

Judd Apatow had two previous titles, both being specific in title, with "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up". So when you see a movie with a title like "Funny People", you will probably expect a very funny movie; This wouldn't be necessarily incorrect, but misleading: There are funny people in this movie, it is just not a movie that is truly as funny as the title would lead you to believe.

Adam Sandler as George is surely the highlight of this movie, We think we will see Adam playing a serious role, and for the most part, he does. His character, dying from a rare blood disease, is brought up almost immediately, so the movie moves right away.

George decides to go back to the stage after making a handful of truly bad movies (An obvious look back at Adam's acting career) and bombs on stage, but Ira, played by Seth Rogen in a different kind of role, gets some big laughs. George hires Ira to help him write jokes, and a different kind of friendship, but a friendship nonetheless, develops.

George soon gets into touch with an old girlfriend, played by Leslie Mann, Director Apatow's Wife, and the two begin to realize how much they have both changed. She has a husband (Eric Bana, in a truly funny role) and two kids (Iris and Maude, Mann and Apatow's real life children), while George lives a life less fulfilling.

The movie takes a real backseat to conventional rules of movies; There is maybe, at a maximum, of two real clichés in this movie, one mentioned in this review already, and the other for good measure.

The movie feels a little long winded, running at nearly 2 and half hours, and the characters are sad, but interesting. Seeing Adam playing a shadow of himself is certainly a depressing site, and Rogen doing all he can for the man that he admires, since he was a kid, no less, is even better, proving that Rogen isn't a one trick pony, hopefully making this a bit more noticeable for his performance in The Green Hornet next year.

The movie also has some great performances from Jason Schwartzman as an actor starring in a horrible television sitcom and Jonah Hill as a competing comedy performer.

But there has to be a reason why this movie is ranked so low, and it could almost be said of the running time, but its coming right back to my first paragraph about ironic titles in movies. I suspected a laugh riot, and got mere chuckles. The stand up is hard to enjoy, being very oriented in genitalia humor and sex jokes doesn't make it really funny, just repetitive.

And I will be honest: I didn't pay attention to the title business and felt rather disappointed. This is a movie not sitting at the dinner table with all the Apatow produced movies of the last three or four years; like George, he's sitting at his own table, not quite like everyone else.

Perhaps now that I've seen the movie for what it truly is, a drama with some funny parts in it, I can now go back and see if maybe I can look at it any differently.

Here is an Apatow film different from anything he's directed, written or produced lately, and deserves to be seen at least once, and while people will see this and perhaps, not laugh as hard, here is hoping Apatow doesn't lose face and give up on this kind of writing. Apatow can make characters more like real people, and he needs to consider maybe doing a drama a little more than once or twice, now that he has done it. If he doesn't, he might end up like most writer-directors, who just get tired after awhile, instead of trying out different genres of film, regardless of what his "Fans" might say anyway.

7 out of 10.

A major surprise from me: I review a movie based off a book I refuse to read. Perhaps that isn't quite the right thing to say before a review, but you know what? It was going to come out anyway, might as well be now. My sister asked me to watch it, and being the nice older brother I am, I decided to watch it.

Stephanie Meyer's book "Twilight", based off the popular book series for young adults follows Bella, a young girl who moves from Arizona to Washington to live with her birth father after her mother and her boyfriend try to find a new house to live in. Bella is enrolled in School "During the middle of March" (I'm sure the distributing company thought carefully about releasing the movie on DVD on a Saturday, during the middle of March) Where she is oddly enough, gaining friends fast. The one group of kids she notices are the Cullens, a group of pale foster kids who all share a secret, and major plot point: they are vampires. The, uh, Good looking one of them all is Edward. At first, the two show very little feelings for each other, but that is not until they fall deeply and madly in love with each other. However, the two come from different worlds, so how can they make it work? Now, like I mentioned earlier, I have NOT read the book series (and I will live just fine without reading it, thank you very much). The movie, however, is something else.

There is a lot a person who doesn't like the book series (Like Myself, based on ignorance of actually trying to read it) could say about this movie, but oddly enough, the movie is for the most part, quite solid. The Teens (according to my sister, who has read the books) look a lot like their counterparts from the books, although for me, I was a little annoyed with the gray white faces, since almost everyone in the movie (Save for The Cullen family and Bella) has some melanin and even vitamin D, which, at one point, a kid addresses she did live in Arizona, so why does she look the way she does, but for crying out loud, must she look like the vampires she so desperately has the hots for? My major problem with the movie is Bella and Edward's acting abilities. Bella and Edward are on camera for most of the movie, so I suppose asking for a little variety in inflection would be kind of nice, but the two talk in an almost uninterested, continuous monotone that only adjusts in about the last hour of the movie. I would understand if Bella maybe sounded interested in discovering Edward was a Vampire, but she sounds as interested as learning that dogs have tails and the sun goes down everyday; It's annoying.

Edward too is a character who is at fault because of this monotone acting ability. I understand he's a vampire and all, but come on, can't you seem a little like you are in love with this girl? Another thing that frustrated me of this movie, again, bringing up acting is the annoying narration. I feel like at some point, the director felt we needed her to narrate what was going on on camera in order to understand Edward didn't show up in a parking lot, or what we were confirming about Bella's feelings toward Edward were true, when it's on camera, or having been shown just one scene earlier, when in reality, you could have filled those moments with the movie score or something.

The character's acting does get better, again, in the last hour, so for one hour, you have no real connection between this vampire and this mortal girl, then it actually gets a little better, introducing this whole idea of abstinence and a villain we really don't care about, even after the villain shows up in the last 45 minutes, I really didn't care about this guy, not even enough to care for why he was a villain to begin with.

The movie, even with all those negatives listed above, is still okay, I guess. The special effects on the Vampires (If you've read the book, you'll know) are interesting, and some of the set designs are exceptionally gorgeous, I'm referring to the forests and shots of the mountains, with the amazing clouds swirling around in the sky. Excluding Edward and Bella, the acting is okay, and the characters don't come off cheesy, which in comparison to the vampires in other movies of recent years, have become very much so.

Overall, fans of the book will be pleased (My sister was) and will be awaiting the sequel (My sister is) to see how can the whole story continue. As for me, judging the movie, the acting is only okay, the romance story annoys the hell out of me (but I'm a different kind of romantic) and if I plan to watch a sequel with my sister, I truly hope the two kids on screen can take some acting lessons, Please.

Visiting Uwe is a documentary that follows director Fabian Hubnar (Who I am not familiar with, but I'm from the U.S., so I feel safe in my reasoning for not knowing who he is) who interviews film pariah Uwe Boll (A director I'm familiar with) in a 50 minute documentary that follows and discusses the enigma of Uwe Boll.

The movie I watched was in German with English Subtitles, but I felt like I agreed with many things that Boll touched on in the interview, such as how marketing can make a bad movie seem good, and comments on some of Hollywood's well known directors and how he feels about someone like Michael Bay (Even to a point where about a half a second of audio was intentionally censored due to possible lawsuit from Bay would have been issued).

The documentary breaks away from it all in brief moments where you get to witness some parts of Boll's lifestyle, such as his home, his pets and the like. It is really interesting to hear him talk in an educated and scholarly manner, which in the U.S., he's known to using profane language and calling various celebrities names that I know I wouldn't say to any celebrity, not even Boll Himself.

I am pleased to say that after finishing Visiting Boll, I have much more of an appreciation of him. While not all of his movies can be gems, you have to admire a man who has persevered through odds and ends, such as dealing with actors that have track records that match the characters they have played in some movies(He brings up Michael Madsen and Ray Liotta) to dealing with actors that have done better movies but never act pompous or irrational about what they are doing (Udo Kier is the only one he mentions).

This documentary isn't perfect though; While Boll has a doctorate in literature, I would expect his vocabulary to be a bit more... "Scholarly", as opposed to a director who speaks in a less educated manner than what his profession might suggest, but he's being real, and there's nothing you can really do about that, at least every word out of his mouth isn't a four letter word.

But, minor inconveniences aside, Visiting Boll is a documentary worth watching. You can find the video through Google, and it's certainly nice to watch if you have time to watch the man who has earned the title "Ed Wood of 2000" and see who he really is.

Before I start this review, I want to tell a brief story. When I was 13, I got into a relationship with a wonderful girl, who just so happened to be my first girlfriend. We went through high school together, until the 4th of July 2008, I presented her with an engagement ring. I don't think I had a single doubt in my mind at that moment. Before the Christmas of 2008, we broke up, having been in a 5 year relationship. As of this review, I am 18 and still trying to get over what I thought would have been a great relationship. I tell this story not to be a downer; I tell it because it helped me understand the character in the movie so much more than I ever would have.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a brilliant comedy created by the Apatow team and written by Jason Segel, who plays the lovable Peter Bretter in the movie. Peter is in a relationship with the beautiful Sarah Marshall, played very well by Kristin Bell. Sarah Marshall is a famous actress on a hit TV show and Peter, her boyfriend, composes the music for the show. Peter's life is going swimmingly up until Sarah breaks up with him.

Peter, torn up by the relationship that should have been, gets told by his step brother, played by the very funny Bill Hader, that he should go out dating, and when that goes sour, go and relax somewhere nice. Peter goes to Hawaii to forget all about Sarah, but runs into her... and her new fling, famous British rock star Aldous Snow, played by the very rock star looking Russell Brand. Peter isn't adjusting much better, but a lovely hotel clerk, played by "That 70's Show"'s Mila Kunis tries to help him adjust to a relationship he goes he can get out of.

I will admit, when I saw this movie in previews, I was skeptical, but the movie was earning rave reviews, and I had planned to watch it at sometime. Now that I am single, I feel like this movie spoke more to me than what it could have done if I was still in a relationship. The moments with Peter's sadness was probably done for humor; I honestly felt myself laugh for a few seconds, then literally go "Aw" right after all of that. I honestly felt like Peter up until I saw this movie.

That's what makes Apatow's comedy better than any National Lampoon sex comedy out on the market, it's made with real people in mind. Peter isn't sex crazed, he's just trying to get over a relationship, and he's surrounded by people that are kind and real. There are cynics and skeptics who will probably argue that no one should have acted as mopey as Peter did, and he should have sucked it up. They haven't been in a relationship for a really long time, I would imagine.

I liked this movie because it had heart and soul. There are very few movies that can make you laugh and feel sad almost at the same time, and with this movie, I nearly felt all the emotions of the emotional spectrum. This is a great movie, for romance lovers, for rocky relationships, for couples (be aware there are some naughty bits in there) or for people who want to laugh at people that are as real as you and me.

I give this movie a 9/10.

For years, Kevin Smith has made movies since the early 90's about real people: He started with Clerks., a movie that has made talking about smut and Star Wars a pastime besides at comic conventions. Smith has had success with Jay and Silent Bob for years with Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Clerks 2. As many fans of Smith know, He also did the change of pace movie title of "Jersey Girl", which I gave a very good review of for being like Smith and having a lot of heart while being grown up.

As big as a fan as I am, Clerks II didn't do it for me; It ruined for me what I loved about Smith's previous work, that as crude as some of his content could be, his heart was in the right place. As I find myself still glued to Kevin Smith's work, and will watch him until he dies, or until I do, I could only guess what would come into Kevin's mind next, and lo and behold, We have Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks in Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

The movie premise is simple. Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) have been friends since the 1st grade, and have been living together for a couple years, which has been fine, until they find themselves in a dilemma: The bills need to be paid, and they are without finances. In a cold town during November, what are a boy and girl to do? Zack decides that the two should make a porn.

Now here is where you probably go away and never look back at this movie ever, but it's actually a great movie. The premise is a pretty mature one, but it doesn't have to be mature to make a movie like this. This movie could have had no plot, make a bunch of sex jokes and never go anywhere, but instead, this movie makes a real great relationship with two people. Zack and Miri have been friends for years, and have endured a lot together, but is their friendship worth it to have sexual relations for profit? What is great about Kevin Smith is he makes characters with great dialog and creative backgrounds, all the while making immature content, while making his characters lovable. That is something that is hard to do, what with straight to video sex comedies everywhere and no nothing movies designed to show a bunch of bad actors in a substandard plot, but this movie makes you care for everybody, and that is what makes this movie great.

When you get into the last 50 minutes or so (The movie is an hour and a half) you see where the movie makes an adult like Smith seem like he's not just another sex comedy writer, but a brilliant comedic writer. I'll tell you what; I wish Zack and Miri were real, just so I could go find them and hang out with them, not Banks and Rogen, but the two characters themselves. You really love them, and that's what makes this movie work.

And to all the people who blast the title and/or content: It's not going to hurt to loosen up and see this movie. It's a romance movie of an entirely different kind, put it that way. See this movie first, then judge, but don't do what I could have done.

Kevin Smith has made a movie I will definitely buy on DVD. I give Zack and Miri Make a Porno a 9 out of 10.

See this movie, you will not be disappointed.

Uwe Boll has earned a reputation over the past few years as being considered as the Ed Wood of 2000. For a director who has made movies, mostly about video games, every video game he has touched has been ruined. The video game, if it had any strong points, has fallen, because the movie that bases itself on that game means nothing to anybody. Of course, I have watched Uwe Boll's movies, and have deeply regretted to waste time on such a venture. Will this movie be the final nail in the coffin? You'd be surprised, but this movie is good as average schlock.

In the Name of the King is a supposed chapter based off the Dungeon Siege video games, although, I haven't played the game, so it makes me question just how close to the video game it's basing itself off of. This story follows Farmer (Jason Statham), a man in a little village, who lives with his wife (Claire Forlani) and his son, along with one of his good friends, Norick (Ron Perlman), who we find, had found him as a child, and brought him to the village he lives in today. A war involving two sides, King Konreid (Burt Reynolds) and Gallian (Ray Liotta) is about to arise. When Krug attacks the Village that Farmer lives in, a race of beasts with human like characteristics, He realizes that his family might be in danger too. With his wife kidnapped and son murdered, Farmer takes up arms in an attempt to find Gallian and kill him, as always in fantasy movies.

Now for the criticism part. This movie isn't "Lord of the Rings"; it's not even "Lord of the Rings" Lite. It's like watching "Dungeons and Dragons" the movie, with Jason Statham and Matthew Lillard (Shaggy from Scooby Doo has an appearance in a serious role, but it's not too serious, trust me.) fighting in the background.

Now to say D&D is a better movie would be an insult to an otherwise lackluster movie. Does that make sense? Uwe Boll has made a movie that is in essence, Power Rangers (The Krug make me think of the Putties from the 90's Power Rangers series) with Fantasy Lore (Mystical Forests, magic abilities, swords and archers) and rather crappy acting, but you have to admit, even "Conan the Barbarian" or "Beast Master" had all these little touches to it as well.

I tried to compare this to Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings", and it failed miserably. The Editing sucks, the plot is rather average, the CGI is okay, the fighting is long, and about 1000 points under the fight sequences to LOTR's fight sequences, and the acting is silly, but every fantasy film compared to LOTR is going to become rather lame, because LOTR is a far better film than most movies already, especially fantasy movies. If you don't look at the director for one second and his crappy reputation, you have a mild, watch once and be done with it, Fantasy Movie.

For that I give it a six out of ten. It's a double-edged sword when you show liking to a movie like this, but it is an okay movie. Compared to all the other movies he has done, it's better than all he has ever touched. That doesn't mean I'm ready to sign the petition to let him continue movie making.

Aachi and Ssipak is one of the new animated films coming from a foreign country and will probably be different, bizarre, life changing and overall, will be praised by anime fans world wide.

No, not likely. It's actually a new animated film from Korea, out of all those movies from Korea, This would be the first and only one I've seen from the country. It's different and bizarre, in that it's plot sounds something like "Mad Max", with "Idiocracy", "Robocop" and "Demolition Man" all compiled together. As for it being accepted by anime fans, it all depends on if you like the story and animation.

The Story takes place in an unknown future, where all energy is now powered by defecation. Yes, Human waste is what saves the world and supplies it with energy. The people who do this are rewarded with Juicy-Pops, sort of like a Popsicle with almost drug inducing side effects, the people get hooked on them, and everyone loves them.

As the movie kicks off, it introduces the Diaper gang, a group of mutants who can't excrete (How, I don't think is explained or yet, not knowing how come they can't, is a better use of words.) but love the delicious Juicy Pops so much, they hijack tankers carrying them to have them.

Within the first two or three minutes, this movie starts to go from a plot that John Waters could make with Adam Sandler, and moves to something that Michael Bay could make with Adam Sandler as the movie goes from excretory humor to an almost nonstop bullet festival as we find these little monsters, as well as average people want the delicious Juicy-Pops for financial and personal gain, and ammunition is spent faster than a World War II movie as it turns into an all out brawl with a mixed up plot to see what happens next.

Aachi and Ssipak are two poor guys whose lives are horrible, they barely have a thing but their motorcycles to their names. A mixed up plot with a crappy movie director (pun intended), the evil leader of the Diaper gang, the government, Aachi and Ssipak and a girl known only as Beautiful becomes the rest of the plot.

The plot is almost too crude to put into words, and as I felt this movie would go nowhere, it speeds up to an action plot and drops the comedy about 45 minutes in. At 1 hour and 24 minutes, it just about wears out its welcome, but because it drops off the bathroom humor about halfway through, there is more "plot" to focus on, which in this case means, watching bullets fly and ridiculous story to commence.

What does the movie provide to you, though? Well for one, it's not a date movie, it made be animated, but it's not for kids, and it's violent, yet cannot compare to Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira", but how does it sit so well to be watched by anybody? If you look it at, it's basically another film to be remade in America with some famous actors, since "The Ring", "Premonition", and all these foreign films have been getting adapted to American Audiences, give it to the Happy Gilmore production crew to make a new movie idea.

It also felt like I could be watching the future. How? With Ethanol, Global warming, and other kinds of power for the future, this movie feels like the future to me? Yes. I can't imagine we aren't much farther away from using defecation for something in society, just have to find a scientist who says it's a great alternate fuel source or something to believe it.

Still, I'm recommending this movie. To who? Well, You have to have a stomach for the plot, be willing to watch something so weird that you'd think 14 year old came up with it, and be willing to watch blood fly and have fight scenes that are so unreal, The Matrix couldn't even have fight scenes of its magnitude in it.

It's entirely inconceivable to make a movie like this, but it has been made, and you know what, it's actually not that bad. Be prepared for some humor that will make you feel like you repeated 4th grade and fight scenes that are simply silly, but it's still a good movie.

I give it an 8/10 Or easily a 3/5.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium is a fantastic family film created by writer - director Zach Helm, who wrote the screenplay for Stranger Than Fiction, a fantastic film which used as much fantasy as this film did to show a side of fiction that's hard to believe and yet shows a side of reality you wouldn't expect to see in a movie of its genre or of this magnitude.

Zach Helm's writing takes it over to a family film setting in Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, which shows yet again that movies that have strange titles don't always seem to turn out as bad as the writers ideas could have been. I'm of course, referencing titles like "Lucky # Slevin" for ridiculous titles that actually have meaning.

Dustin Hoffman is Edward Magorium, a man over 240 years old who runs an amazing toy store, the kids can interact with it, as well as adults, just depends on who you are. Molly Mahoney is played by Natalie Portman, a young woman who was a prodigy on piano, working at the toy store, trying to figure out how to get over the hurdles in life, and Zach Mills is Eric, a little boy who finds the magic of the Wonder Emporium to be amazing, but has a hard time making friends.

Also brought into the story is Jason Bateman, who plays Henry, who is an accountant (but is humorously called a mutant, because that's what an accountant is, a cross between a counter and a mutant) Whose perception of fun is a lot like Zack Helm's original character, Harold Crick in STF was into, mostly accounting.

As a result, he never really sees the Emporium have all the fun it does like the children and adults can and do have. As Mr. Magorium soon announces, he is going to pass away very soon, and he wants Molly to take over the business and have Henry get all the money situations and the like taken care of.

What? I thought this was a family movie! It is. See, unlike other family films where flatulence or pop culture is to be referenced in every line like "Shrek" or "Hoodwinked" or other films in that range, this movie avoids all attempts of commercialism by being a movie for all kids and some adults.

This movie is not for everyone, but I personally loved it. It has a lot of heart. Learning to rise to the occasion, to learn to love and understand loss is what a family film should be. Instead of trying to jam the next toy down your throat, movies like this try to explain how fun family movies should be, minus the raunchy and inappropriate content.

I would love to watch this movie again with a bunch of younger kids, whether they be my friends kids or some of my own . There are very few films that should have such an impact on a child's mind. Some that teach a lesson but can be moral and appropriate for children. I don't think since "Curious George" or "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey" has a movie been family oriented and at the same time, been good too.

Take a break from the imitators. This is truly a family film.

The Neverending Story, or "Unendliche Geschichte, Die" as it's called in Germany, was directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and is a tale about a young boy named Bastian, who is a boy with a large imagination, who stops in an old bookstore after being chased into it by bullies, when he finds a mysterious book called "The Neverending Story".

As young Bastian takes the book and begins reading it, the movie goes from what I thought to be a stuffy fantasy film, to actually be a magical, clever and emotional adventure. In an age where CGI rules nearly every movie, and pop culture references are to be scattered within every scene in order to create a bit of a norm with the audience, this film does the exact opposite, by creating no silly dialog based off of some other film, or referencing some famous TV show or popular song, this is what fantasy should be today, but sadly, is falling apart with every new "Shrek" and "Hoodwinked" out on the market.

The scenes that give off the most powerful emotional responses to me are the ones when the world tends to look chaotic, destroyed and nearly moments away from their destruction. The creatures in the film, such as the Rock Biter and Falkor are the greatest examples of why making creatures for movies with good old fashioned foam rubber and some animatronics instead of CGI really go a long way. The magic Atreyu experiences with his interaction with these two creatures is a lot better than watching the child actor trying to imagine the creature in front of him. Working with CG, people's eyes wander because they cannot see the creature, with the characters in this movie acting with puppets, there's more response and emotion than trying to act with something that's not there.

The last few minutes are the most emotional to me. The Princess is simply a cute little girl who knows what the problem is, but it's a bit different than just saying it.

Yes, the acting on Bastian's part is a bit bad, and the ending is a bit weak, and the editing is pretty poor, compared to other movies, but you know what? I loved this movie. I didn't know what was going to happen next. I had tears in my eyes during the swamp of despair, I got emotional when the princess yelled for Bastion and I had little tears for the ending theme.

People probably look at this movie as outdated, I think it's fresher than anything out to date. From the beginning song by Limahl (Check for Kajagoogoo from the 80's) to the ending with Bastion yelling "Yeah!", it's an absolute treat.

Give Shrek a break, grab this movie instead.

About this time in October last year, M. Dot Strange (His stage name from when he used to do music) came up with an independent masterpiece that appeared on Youtube, an animated film called "We Are The Strange", which was merely only a trailer, but an intriguing trailer, indeed.

So, for almost a full year and a half, those that sat at their computers waited for the movie to go through Sundance. Fans (I, myself, included) among many others, were glued to the intriguing persona of M. Dot Strange, as he commented on those people who were looking at this movie, criticizing it good, criticizing it badly. Some people left within 15 minutes. Some stayed and watched the madness. For those who left, I feel very sorry for you. You missed an amazing piece of art.

We Are The Strange is a movie with a very simple plot, but presents itself in such a dazzling way that you have to seek to finish it, just to see the art. No matter how you criticize the film, you cannot deny that the art form, Str8nime, a new style of animation created by Strange himself, combines 8 bit animation (Like the old Mario Games on Nintendo) Anime (This stuff is nothing like what you see on TV. It's human in it's animated style) and Strangeness, and this movie provides plenty of it.

The story revolves around two main characters, Blue and Emm. Blue is an anime girl who worked, who lived in a bordello, whilst under the ownership of HIM (The voice of the Director), who tells her she is ugly, and will never be anything to him or anyone. She is banished to a lonely forest, where the other character, Emm, a doll boy (A doll's body with a voice that squeaks and squeals for speech) lives alone in the forest. He does not know why he's there, or how he got there, but ponders it.

Under specific detail, Emm highlights he wants Ice Cream, and wants to go the big city to get it. Fear and torment plague his mind, as the idea of being an outcast is something he recognizes. Blue, too, feels this way.

As the two go to Stopmo City, they find that evil lurks everywhere, and only a strange fighter named Rain appears to fight the darkness around the city.

This movie is brilliant. It's not for everybody, but it is fantastic. The art is just dazzling, the visuals are what tell the story, and it's not just a fan's review that's saying this, as a movie goer, it's nothing Pixar has ever done. Shrek cannot compete to what this movie tries to say.

If you need to see a movie that is brimming with genius, has an intelligent way of story telling (This does not have much dialog, and that's good, because instead of clouding your mind with meaningless George Lucas-esquire lingo, you can focus on a bitter and at the same time, sweet movie.

I give this movie a 9/10.

In 2007, if you look back at a lot of the movies that have come out in the range of comedies for teenagers, very few actually have anything to do with intelligent content anymore. "American Pie" and its sequels make light the idea of having sex before leaving High School, mix in some gross humor that makes it look like the Farrelly Brothers got a hold of the script and added some creative touches and you have an instant, been seen before Teen Sex Comedy.

It's been done before seriously, too. How many teen dramas do we see where everything feels like its a cookie cutter cutout of an after school special? This is for once, a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, but doesn't take itself too gross to be very funny.

Accepted is the story of Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long) who, gathering by the title of the film, hasn't been accepted into any colleges, although for his friend, Sherman (Superbad's Jonah Hill) he's getting into the Harman College. In order to avoid disappointing his parents any longer, Bartleby creates a fictional college to surprise his parents that he's been accepted, and from there on, it leads into a college that I myself would want to actually hope to get accepted to. (Oh, but we can all dream, can't we?) Accepted is one of those kinds of movies where you are not supposed to believe everything could be realistic. Finding a building coincidentally close to another college and make it a realistic sort of place? Being able to create a school with only an ingenuity that a real genius would have to have? None of this stuff should be taken seriously. If this were a drama movie, you still couldn't take it seriously. This is a clever teenage comedy that skimps by on the sexual content and makes a very intelligent movie about education, fun and finding what it is you want to be. You see some women in bathing suits, and some sex jokes are here and there, but it's nothing cringe inducing, it's all for laughs, and most of all, it's better than any movies that have come out that I would allow a young crowd to watch, at least 14-15 year olds, compared to the American Pie movies where you should probably be graduated to understand, comprehend or even see the jokes.

If you like comedies where you shouldn't have to skip through the scenes because of heavy in detail kissing or sexual content you can't believe got into a PG-13 movie, see this movie. It's intelligent, creative, and most of all, it's funny.

9/10.

With movies that have made mockery of such stories and movies involving disaster films (Airplane!) Police squads (Naked Gun) Horror movies (Scary Movie) and even Teen Sex Comedies (Not Another Teen Movie) a mockery of the men and women in arms seems like a very possible topic to exploit for humor, right? If it were a movie done by the Wayans Brothers or David Zucker and it didn't star Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall or D.J. Qualls, it might have had some kind of chance.

Delta Farce is one of those kinds of films that tries to make fun of a lot of movies where the military branch of the world needs a little mockery, since it's such a serious profession to work in. This kind of recipe has been seen before: Take a couple of bumbling friends (Qualls, Engvall and Larry) give them some kind of crisis with their lives, and have them put into a situation where bumbling around actually means your doing a good job.

This has been seen before in much better movies, and trust me, those movies are a hell of a lot better than what you could see in this movie.

What could have made this movie funny is that these three friends are stuck in Mexico, but they haven't got a clue, they just assume the people living in the village are Iraqis. Stuff like that could have been funny, but instead, it's never taken opportunity of. The characters act confused, and never make an understanding right away (Judging by the terrain, Iraq apparently has mountains and grass, but I digress.) This movie could have made jokes barraging the military, but instead, the three men in charge are much more bumbling and funnier to mock because of their stupidity and buffoonery, which is all well and good, but these kind of jokes rarely work unless the character(s) have a bit more intelligence than the ones in this movie.

Also, in poor taste, stereotypes are just strewn about throughout the film. The villains in this movie have some kind of intelligence when to inform others about their mistakes, but seem incompetent when faced with situations of their own. Danny Trejo is a poor villain known as Carlos Santana (Not the singer, Carlos repeats) whose annoyance is that he's given many opportunities to shoot people, and he talks about it.

There's also a very horrible slam to homosexuals that just disgusted me (He's gay, flamboyant and Hispanic, and no, I'm not against any of the three, it's just insulting to mock in distaste) and Keith David in this movie as the only real normal thinking man is rarely seen, probably to avoid being seen in this movie as much as possible.

For someone else, this might actually be funny to someone. My father, who was in the military for awhile, loved this film because he knew a lot of the stuff they were going through: yelling men, conflict in the field, etc. Perhaps this movie might be funny to someone who has went to basic training and gone to Iraq, or not.

All I know is that for me, this is definitely one movie I did not enjoy, it's very limited in laughs, in anything. My father loved it, but I did not. If you've seen "City Slickers" or "Wild Hogs" or "In the Army Now" with Pauly Shore (After seeing this movie, Pauly Shore actually seems like a welcome release.) Watch those movies again, because this movie is just not worth your time, your attention span, or for your country.

3/10.

This movie, which only runs an hour long, still feels like a movie to me. As an Anime with no dialogue and communicates by visual storytelling, it is seriously one movie that had me hooked. The songs are catchy and toe tapping, my ankle was actually sore from so much foot tapping from the addictive drum beats and technological hooks.

There was one part where I felt the movie would have been a bore, without giving too much away, it happens right after the first song ends, where I would expect raucous noises during a moment where large audiences are seen, I'd be used to hearing screaming or sounds of panic, which did not happen, and for that, I felt slightly gypped, but for the most part, the songs and animation compliment each other, as the animation is beautiful (though it's hardly Hayao Miyazaki quality) while giving the aliens a human look, and the humans an alien quality.

These anime characters look nothing like Powerpuff Girls with very large eyes as most anime television shows tend to do, but instead feel like real people at times.

Also, as the ending plays out, I had to crack a big smile at its "Twist" of an ending. It was something I did not expect at all, since the story was especially intriguing. This is an anime movie I will indeed watch again.

I only wished I could rate this movie in half stars too, because it's not a 8 or 10 to me, but a 9.5, which I feel gives the movie the appropriate credit it deserves.

What can be said about the Transformers that hasn't been said already? What haven't they been turned into? Surely you can't mention Transformers without the various cartoon series that have been created since the show and its beginning in 1984, or the annoying spin-offs from it. You can't deny they haven't been made into action figures, and you cannot forget the video games that have seen light on the PS2 and other systems, and of course, the Original Cartoon Movie cannot be forgotten. It seems like by now, Transformers have been recognized in several different forms of media, and are household names to America.

Looking at Michael Bay, whose resume includes such horrid films as the Bad Boys movies, Armageddon (we all really like it because of the soundtrack, admit it) and the 3+ Hour Pearl Harbor (Which is probably the longest three hours anyone has sat through), it's too hard to say whether the reputation of the Transformers could be made better or tarnished by Bay and his direction of a long running cartoon show.

However, Bay pulls off a movie that definitely does not sit on my top favorite movies of 2007 (His ranks lowest, against 1. Pirates 3, 2. Harry Potter 5 and 3. Ratatouille) but still makes a movie that I enjoyed watching in the theater, but I doubt I'll want to see again.

Here's a brief summary: Sam Witwicky (Played Fantastically by Shia LeBeouf) is a junior in High School who gets what looks like a automobile that has something about it, something that the Dealer states ("A driver don't pick the cars. Cars pick the driver.") and soon gains a vehicle that looks like a nice way to pick up chicks (like Megan Fox's character, Mikaela), but has something more to it. It's an Autobot named Bumblebee, one of several seen in the movie.

At the same time, in Qatar (Brush up on your geography for this one), several men fighting for the war (Played by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson) get attacked by strange machines in the desert. Suddenly, the war turns to be battle between man and machine, but where do they come from? Are one of our allies (or Enemies) trying to take us out with special technology unlike any other seen before? As the movie advanced, it felt like it was going nowhere a bit too fast. A strange transmission that sounds like garbled talking on a shorting out walkie-talkie is the main focus for the most part, until we advance a bit more, and finally see some action.

I will give Michael Bay this credit: He knows how to pace, to a point. His development on all the characters are significant enough to have time to explain them all, but it's a 2 hour, 24 minute movie. There must be a lot of fighting, right? Strangely enough, fighting doesn't occur enough.

When a lot of money is being put into making a movie of this caliber, you'd expect a lot of fighting, especially since Transformers seem like they would be awesome fighters, but the movie has at least a maximum of 25 minutes of fighting, while the rest of the film is mostly character development that drags itself out to the point where it's not even character development anymore, it's just trying to extend the movie out until its large finale, but then even the fighting at the end is not enough. I craved for more.

The audience that was there spent a lot of the movie in the bathroom or snack bar until the fight scenes came on, otherwise, a lot were talking and became bored. I was getting a bit annoyed with a movie this talked about and this big had less action than previously imagined.

One thing about this movie that I enjoyed was the fact there the cast is having fun (sort of), little jokes and sight gags were pretty good, and the audience got a laugh when it was implied for you to laugh.

I will say Michael Bay has made an okay movie. It's flaws are that it's a bit too long, and spends a lot of its time trying to move the plot, but tiptoes to the end instead of making it in bounds and leaps, and takes a long time to deliver action instead of granting us our wish of constant combat.

As for the positives, the acting is well done, the characters have personalities (At least LaBeouf's and Fox's characters do) as well as the Autobots, and the film has a good way of recognizing when it's trying to be funny, while keeping in context of the T.V. Show.

I give this movie a 7 out of 10.