M-N Movies
Mallrats (1985)
The only reason I gave this movie two and a half, is because of Jason Lee and Kevin Smith. Jason is hilarious and saves this movie, and I have a lot of respect for Kevin Smith and what he has done with so little. He is the little guy in concept, and you would hope that anyone with his drive could have the same success.
Starring some unnotables, other than Shannon Doherty and pre-cool guy Ben Affleck, this movie is all about the craziness that goes on in these two relationships and is set in a local mall. These two guys lose their girlfriends almost simultaneously, and then go on a crusade to win them back.
You have to really appreciate Kevin Smith’s brand of humor. It isn’t dumb per say or dense, it just is a little throwback and heavy handed at times.
If you like Kevin Smith movies, this is one of his better ones. But I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone. It is kind of funny to see Ben Affleck as a big haired Bostonian punk, and there are other really funny parts without Jason Lee like the guy who can’t identify the image in the fragmented picture, no matter how long he stares at it. But again, more college student fodder than someone I would watch with the kiddies.
National Treasure (2004)
I usually like Nicolas Cage in big action movies, but the previews for this Jerry Bruckheimer produced film didn’t really catch me. But Chris liked it, so for fifty cents I gave it a try. Boy was I glad.
A great mixture of history and action, this is one of the most original movies I have seen in the past six months to a year. Also starring Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, Sean Bean and Diane Kruger, this movie will keep you guessing until the very end. I would have given it a higher rating if there weren’t the big action shots that made you go, “Yeah right” or “No one would ever say that”, but you expect a little fantasy in these “big bucket o popcorn” type films.
The story revolves around the idea that the founding fathers of the USA hid the biggest treasure ever known to man, one that was fought over since the dawn of time. In order to hide it, the fathers used an elaborate scheme of clues to keep the treasure safe. Cage is in a family that has been searching for the treasure for many generations and he is the one to finally make the discovery. The movie doesn’t elaborate how he goes the extra distance, but we soon learn how intelligent he is at solving riddles.
So, not to go on an on. See this movie if you like good action, but contained in the relevance of the film in archeology. Nicolas Cage does an awesome job as does Justin Bartha who serves as the comedic relief. See this movie too if history interests you, from the technology in protecting the Declaration of Independence, down to the allure of a hidden message from a lost generation of thinkers. Don’t see this movie if you can’t stand occasion bad dialogue, or a movie that assumes some things to be able to tell a great story in a two and a half hour time slot.
Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
The Jury is still out on this one.
I got to borrow this movie from Christine, and so that was one of the main reasons I watched it, Free film.
This is an MTV film with no one noteworthy, and is highly oft-kilter. It is basically about the weird lives of these high school teens that live in a dismal poor town in Idaho. The main character is every stereotypical dork rolled into one.
I liked the movie because if you can look past it’s slow pace, and kind of stupid humor, the character development pays off in the end for some of the humor. Plus, it was a different story, and everything was really rough and dirty to kind of fit the run down town.
I wouldn’t recommend this movie to the general public. Like I said, if you appreciate seeing a different idea, then see it. This movie is all about some of the most awkward moments someone can have in high school, so you may enjoy that too. But the humor is poignantly planned stupidness, so many people won’t be able to get past that. But, to see the main character (dork) do the dance at the end of the movie for the whole school, is just breathtakingly hilarious. Trust me.
Manchurian Candidate (2004)
This movie was not what I expected at all, and boy was it weird at times.
Starring Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber and Jon Voight, this is the movie that makes all of your wildest fears come true, the idea of a president that is bought and controlled by a special interest.
This movie is very trippy to follow, and violent at times. The first half of the movie is told is flashback to an opening scene in the Gulf War that goes horribly wrong. Denzel Washington starts to think that what he knows to be true isn’t, and he sets out to find out the truth before it is too late. It leads him right to the White House where the vice president on the Democratic tickets is being controlled by a group called Manchurian Global.
In the end, the movie works out to be pretty interesting. I was put off at first because even some of the footage looked a little futuristic, like the nomination celebration settings, and the live feeds of the presidents talking. Plus there are as always, a ton of close ups of Denzel’s face either breathing hard and sweating, biting his lip, or any of his other “troubled” quirks that he brings out for a movie like this.
If you like Denzel, even though this isn’t really his typical take charge kind of role, it is still solid acting and you may like it. If you like a different movie that you may not figure out right away, but gradually unravels, you may like this movie. But, if you don’t like psychedelic scenes with covert operating tables and sinister things happening to soldiers, you may want to pass.
Overall an interesting remake of a movie I would almost be curious to see the original with Frank Sinatra.
Meet the Fockers (2004)
I went to see this movie primarily because of Sarah’s parents. I had seen Meet the Parents and didn’t see what the big deal was. I don’t really like painful movies, where the main character goes through some major struggle just for trying to be the good guy. But Sarah’s parents laugh their heads at Meet the Parents, where usually they are pretty contained, or asleep at any other movie.
So over Christmas break we went and saw the follow up to the original. I think that this movie was kind of the same idea. Jack (Robert Dinero) still doesn’t completely trust Greg (Ben Stiller) and as a result, he gets into really painful situations, from teaching the baby to say a very bad word, to his eccentric parents showing off his foreskin and then dropping it in the fondue.
Everyone around me keeps saying, “It wasn’t as good as the first” “It was just the same old thing.” And I say, “What is wrong with that?”
The reason that the first movie was so good, was that it was unexpected. At the time, the pairing of Ben Stiller and Robert Dinero in a comedy shocked everyone. The problem with this movie was that it had expectations from people coming in to be the same experience, when in fact it could never be.
But they did come up with even more bizarre situations and continued on in the theme where it seemed believable and you just could barely watch but had to know what would happen. It was funny, and it used the same formula of success from the first one, and was probably more funny. It is just too bad that everyone could have just forgotten all about the first one, and came in with no expectations. This movie would have blown their minds too.
Man on Fire (2004)
Denzel Washington is a tortured soul, and ex Marine with a drinking problem. Isn’t that how every one of his movies starts out now? No reason to live, down on his luck, with some sort of drug problem? But I knew that going in, and I rented it anyway.
Denzel is the bodyguard of a little girl for an American Woman and her Spanish husband in Mexico City, the child kidnapping center USA. He resists at first, but soon falls in love with the little girl just in time to have her kidnapped. Shot four times, he still comes back in Denzel style, bleeding but so dang thick, you can’t stop that big ol bear.
He then hunts down and tortures one by one each member that was involved in the kidnapping to end it once and for all. Pretty straightforward and brutal, but that dark part of me loves that revenge. These scum bags kidnapped a little girl, what would you do? It leads him to quite a chain of corruption that ends up back in the family but in the end the girl gets saved, and Denzel dies, fulfilled in life.
Feeling like violence, and vengeance, with quite the stylizing cinematics, check this out. Not for the faint of heart, one guy gets his finger chopped off.
Matrix Revolutions (2003)
When I saw Matrix Reloaded in Georgia on my honeymoon, I wasn’t overly thrilled. There had been a lot of time between the movies and a ton of anticipation. But the second time I saw it, those expectations were gone and I actually like the movie for it’s own reasons other than what I thought I would originally.
So, when Revolutions came out, I tried not to have high expectations for it. But somehow, I was still kind of like, what the heck.
I saw it last night again thinking I may have a similar reaction, that it would be better a second time around. Hardly.
This is what I will say for being good about the movie. How in the heck do you envision something like that, and make it come to life? The robotics, the intricate detail, the ships, the Sentinels, all of it was just phenomenal. When the sentinels pour into Zion like a plague, you have that feeling of “Oh Crap”. A feeling of empathy for these weak humans. A lot of the camera shots are low to the ground so you see from their perspective.
The characters were fallible. Neo gets his eyes burned out, who saw that coming? Plus Trinity dies and in the end, maybe Neo does too. It’s not like the heroes came out unscathed.
Plus there are those robot machines the humans use to shoot with, pretty intense. But that is what most of the movie is, intense. Intensely graphic actually which in my opinion is quite a divergence from the other movies. From the Neo vs. Bane fight, to the kid taking over for the face mangled captain, to Neo’s eyes getting burned out. After the first couple movies of perfectly choreographed fight scenes, this movie was becoming like all the others.
That is my final complaint. You don’t really get a sense of urgency when you watch this movie. It really is for popcorn, you sit back, watch the amazing effects and think “Now why are Agent Smith and Neo flying around like two Supermen around the city”. It is like that final fight scene between the mortal enemies even took a life of it’s own, spawning away from the Wachowski brothers in attempting to top the fights scenes of the previous to movies. It was presumptuous that and audience would swallow that and a little like a super athlete getting caught up in his own hype.
It became a special effects movie in the end where it should have encapsulated what in my opinion was the original idea, a new fresh concept about this world that didn’t even exist, was built around computer programs, and therefore a human in that world could bend the physical rules.
Not a half an hour of machines shooting machines and an overload of special effects.
