VH Corner

The Machinist

Directed: Brad Anderson
Starring: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Christian Bale looks super freaky thin as a guy who hasn’t slept in over a year. Is he seeing things due to sleep deprivation? Or are people really after him?

Please please please please do not ever allow Christian Bale to lose 63 pounds for a movie role. He looks like an extremely skinny 12-year-old boy that has developed no muscles. The more weight he loses in the movie, the more you can see his skeleton showing through his back, rib cage, and his face. It is highly disturbing. It disturbs others in the movie too, and most of them think he’s on drugs. He gets tested at his drill-press job after he injures another co-worker by mistake. I would have thought after a year of not sleeping, he would have done that sooner.

He does not tell anyone at work about his sleep deprivation. He only confides in Jennifer Jason Leigh’s hooker character. For some reason, she is attracted to him, but also worried about him since he is so darn skinny. For someone that finds Christian Bale very attractive, I was repulsed by the sight of him so thin. Ick!

I had no idea why Leigh’s character or another waitress lady were interested in him. He isn’t very nice or fun to hang out with. He talks crazy all the time, especially when he keeps finding notes around his apartment, and talks to a guy that no one else seems to see or believes exists.

While not liking his character, I still wanted to know the reason behind his insomnia and weight loss so I hung in there. The clues start becoming more frequent towards the end of the movie until you realize what happened a year ago to start this cycle of craziness in him. I found the ending satisfying, but really wanted Bale to eat something. It really made me want to go watch him in American Psycho where he looks really good. It’s hip to be square!

Rating: B-

Tags: christian bale, jennifer jason leigh, machinist

Mean Creek
Directed: Jacob Estes

Rory Culkin gets his brother to help him exact revenge on a bully, and of course, things go horribly wrong.

Rory Culkin plays Sam, a middle school kid who gets picked on by a bully, who has mental issues and is held back a few grades. He bothers other kids too, so most kids in school hate him. His older brother and his friends are in high school, and they remember being in the same grade as the bully so they know all about what a fabulous human being he can be to others.

There seems to be a lack of parents in the movie until the very end. The kids are off on their own doing a lot of stuff, when they could use some parental supervision.

Sam and his girlfriend are going on their first “date”, but on that same day they are going to play a prank on the bully by saying they are all going canoeing. The real plan is to leave him out there or get him to strip naked and jump into the water while they all leave so he can walk home naked and wet. Sam, his older brother and his two friends are in on it. He doesn’t tell his girlfriend until they get there. She’s confused about what’s going on since she doesn’t like the bully either, and the bully seems to think it is Sam’s birthday, and that’s why they are all going on the river. She doesn’t like the idea, and says they shouldn’t do it to Sam.

While the day goes on, others in the group get to know the bully some more and go back and forth on whether they should pull the prank. One guy is adamant that they stick to the plan, but, of course, the plan doesn’t go off without a hitch. Horrible things happen and then they all have to deal with the aftermath.

it’s a bit of a downer movie, but all the kids in it are great. You actually feel sorry for the bully when a few others do, but then you see a bit later why they all hate him. You go back and forth about whether they should do it or not. It isn’t a happy ending either, but I did wish it would have gone on a little longer. It seemed to end a bit short. I wanted to see a bit more of the aftermath since I felt like I was hanging on what happened or would happen with a few characters.

Grade: B

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

Based on the book series, three orphans have to go live with their horrible Count Olaf played by Jim Carrey.

This movie was a blast to watch. The art direction was awesome. I loved the look of the house, scenery, Count Olaf, the kids, and everything house. Even when it was supposed to be dreary and gloomy, it still popped.

The role of Count Olaf fit Jim Carrey and his very showy acting. It wasn’t overacting here, but fit very much into the character. The kids were awesome. I’m not the biggest fan of kids in movies, but I liked all the kids.

I also really enjoyed the dark humor of the storyline and all the loony adventures. It is some pretty dreary stuff, but was so much fun to watch.

Grade: A

John Hartnett meets a girl who reminds him of an old girlfriend who went missing and he starts his search for her again.

When discovering the Postal Service a few years back, I downloaded their cover of Against All Odds. That’s when I realized it came from the soundtrack of this movie, but wasn’t available anywhere else. While flipping through cable the other day, this movie was about to start and I mentioned to Jer that the song came from this movie’s soundtrack. We decided we would watch it just to hear the song, even though we could just go play it anytime we wanted in our mp3 collection.

I am not a Josh Hartnett fan. I think he’s stupid and I don’t get why people find him attractive. He’s engaged to some big teeth girl in the movie but doesn’t really want to get married to her since he’s still in love with some girl he dated two years ago when he lived in Chicago. He now lives in New York where he met big teeth. He is visiting Chicago when he thinks he sees former girlfriend. We start to get weird ass flashbacks to how he met her, and he becomes obsessed with finding this woman that he is sure is his ex-girlfriend.

He runs into an old friend, Matthew Lilliard, who seems to be the only sane person in the movie, except I kept expecting him to put the Scream mask on and kill everyone. I think that would have improved the movie since it becomes more convoluted with the flashbacks, coincidences and the inability of anyone to actually own a cell phone. He has a cell phone in the beginning of the movie, but for some reason no one can get a hold of each other. There is all sorts of missed connections and I just wanted to yell at everyone to quit being so stupid about getting a hold of each other. It seriously isn’t that hard, but he misses ex-girlfriend over and over again, while meeting some other girl with the same name and other stupid crap happens. I don’t want to give too much away in case anyone has the need to watch this movie.

Even though this movie declared itself dumb about 30 minutes into it, we continued to watch it, just to hear the song. While the movie was going on, Jer guessed that the song was used over the credits. We watched the entire movie and no song. We watched the credits, no song. I thought maybe I was crazy so I checked Amazon and it lists the song on the soundtrack. It didn’t even play for five seconds in the movie so why the hell is it on the soundtrack? There were other good songs on the soundtrack that I would have recognized that also weren’t played in the movie. This is a perfect example of why this movie is so incredibly lame.

After that, we went and played the mp3 over and over again to try to erase the stupid movie from our minds. It made me quite angry with its lack of songs that I expected to hear.

Grade: F

Will Smith plays a little fish who everyone thinks is a shark slayer, but the shark is really his friend who isn’t interested in eating fish so helps his buddy get a big reputation. Can he keep the secret?

Jer and I watched this on cable a while back. It was starting when we sat down so we thought we’d check it out. I really had no big desire to see the movie before that point.

I thought it started out pretty corny with all the underwater/fish gags of stores and other city bits. That was over pretty soon though. Will Smith was goofy, but likeable as the main fish kid. I loved the shark that was a vegetarian. He was funny. Angelina Jolie was the sexy fish, but I found her to be disturbing. I think they tried too hard to make her fish look human with the hair and stuff. It just looked too odd.

The storyline was predictable, but it seemed like a cute kid movie. It wasn’t as funny as Shrek or Toy Story, but it wasn’t super annoying.

Grade: C

Clive Owen is the sword in the stone guy and Keira Knightley plays Guinevere, who is now apparently a warrior (?!?). They also lost all the fun magic stuff. What’s up with that?

This is a very different take on the King Arthur legend, which I didn’t realize was so much legend and hardly any reality. Camelot isn’t involved at all. It introduces us to Arthur, who is not king at the time, but does have his knights with him. All of his knights are pagans, while he is a Christian ready to go to Rome, which controls Britain at that point. Lancelot is introduced as being the best friend of Arthur. The whole love triangle with Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere never happens in this movie. It is hinted about during one scene, but nothing ever comes of it.

Continue reading “King Arthur”

Tags: clive owen, keira knightley, king arthur

Is there anything funnier than flying balls?

Looking at my synopsis I wrote when this movie came out, I see it leaves much to be desired, but I guess it also sums up that no matter what the plot is, you are basically laughing at balls hitting people over and over again.That was the only time that I really laughed outloud at the movie was when people were getting pummeled. Jeremy really hated the cheerleader kid in the movie so he would laugh hysterically every single time he got hit. He never got tired of watching that. I would then end up laughing at Jeremy laughing at this kid getting hit, since he took so much joy in his pain.

I would also giggle at all the cameos in the movie that I didn’t know would be there, like David Hasselhoff or Jason Bateman. I was having more fun seeing who else would pop up in the movie than the actual movie itself.

I didn’t have high expectations for the movie, so it seemed to be exactly what I thought it would be. It would have been nice if it was funnier, but it was only mildly amusing. If Ben Stiller annoys you, which he does annoy me at times, then he will annoy you in this movie. He really only ever plays two characters: asshole guy and wussy guy. He’s in full asshole role in this movie. I only thought it was funny when he was playing opposite his real-life wife Christine Taylor. When he was up in her face yelling, I knew they had to be cracking up while filming that scene. By looking at the gag reel, they did.

Speaking of the gag reel, we watched it on DVD and I recommend watching the gag reel since there is a part with David Hasselhoff they should have kept in the movie. It would have fit in with the silliness of it. There is also an alternate ending that I don’t know why they even bothered with it. I watched it and thought, “Is that it? Why?”

Rating: C

This movie is about an boxer trainer, Frankie (Clint Eastwood), an ex boxer, Scrap (Morgan Freeman) and a girl who wants to become a boxer, Maggie. (Hilary Swank) Maggie is from a dysfunctional lower class family and finds herself in Frankie’s gym to start training. Over time, Frankie finally gives in and starts training Maggie. The movie takes you through her training and her quick rise to the top and how it all comes to an end.

I liked that they developed the characters without over doing it. You hate her mom just enough - you are saddened by Frankie’s daughter just enough. You know how Scrap ended his boxing career.

I knew it was going to be sad but no one told me just how. I wasn’t ever going to watch the movie but it was on HBO last night. I thought it a gripping story and what I would have given for a happy ending.

Ron Perlman is a demon conjured up by the Nazis during WWII, but ends up working as an agent of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense kinda sorta fighting bad guys when he feels like it.

I know nothing about the comic book. I was not even familiar with the comic even existing before the movie came out. I thought it looked pretty bad from the trailers, but they can lie.

It started out with an interesting premise with some crazy Nazi/WWII/supernatural spin on the entire thing and how Hellboy was created. It was even okay when a new guy was brought into the Bureau in the present day to meet an older Hellboy and the guy who raised him to be a good guy instead of evil.

Then Selma Blair comes into the picture and brings everything down. I really hate her. She annoys me in every movie she is in. I don’t think she can act, but I think her worst acting is in this movie. She is so monotone the entire movie. She’s very distracting and, of course, Hellboy is fascinated with her pyro character. There’s also a brilliant scene where she is in a hospital that knows she can start fires with her mind, and she has a nightmare that makes her entire body burst into flames. Do they have her in a fireproof room? Of course not. She burns the entire hospital down. SMRT.

The main plot of the story is some big, bad guy that originally pulled Hellboy out of whatever dimension he came from and come back to finish up the job and needs Hellboy to start the apocolypse. The bad guys are not scary at all. They make these creatures that look like the monster from predator, which is just not very creative at all. Hellboy calls the creatures Stinky, which is pretty funny. Hellboy makes lots of one-liners that sound like they are trying too hard, hoping that one will catch on with all the kiddies watching the movie.

The entire movie seemed like it was trying too hard to be cool rather than concentrate on something that is fun and entertaining like a comic book movie should be on the lowest level. Anything above that would be cool, like Spiderman or Batman Begins, but I’d be happy with fun. This wasn’t too much fun.

Rating: C

Creators of South Park have made a marionette movie about a group of Americans hell-bent on reducing world crime by going after terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.

Yeah, so this movie sucked. I heard that it was hilarious and a witty, biting satire. I didn’t think it was any of those things. I have quit watching South Park, but mostly out of laziness. When I run across an episode here or there, I still think it is funny. I enjoyed the South Park movie. I thought this would be the same kind of humor, but I couldn’t believe it was made by the same guys.

There was nothing subtle about it, which I found to be annoying. There was every stereotype out there and they tried really hard to offend everyone. I wasn’t offended, but just annoyed that nothing funny was happening.

I chuckled a few times at the puppets sticking each other in the eye by mistake. I also found the songs amusing. They were more along the lines that I thought the movie’s humor would be. The song about patriotic Americans thinking they are awesome was pretty funny. I liked the song about how freedom costs a buck o’ five. I kept giggling at the Pearl Harbor/Ben Affleck song. Other than that though, it was back to a movie that I couldn’t wait to end.

I heard the puppet sex scene was great. I really wished we didn’t have the unrated version to watch because I could have done without the peeing and pooping. ack! When the “shock” value of the puppets having sex wore off in the first few seconds, then it became boring. The scene where the main guy vomiting for a million years just went on too long. If I could find the fast forward button on the DVD easier, we would have skipped it. The first time I heard the speech about assholes, dicks and pussies, it was slightly amusing. To hear it all again by someone else later on in the movie was boring.

I think Jer felt the same way since we watched the first 30 minutes of the movie one night before going to bed. After that, he asked if I had sent the movie back. I reminded him we hadn’t watched the rest of it yet. He groaned that we had to watch more of it and we hadn’t even got to the puppet sex, vomiting and asshole/dick/pussy speeches yet.

I didn’t think the movie looked too funny when I saw the previews, but I had heard that it was great so I thought I might not have seen the funny parts yet. I should have went with my first thoughts.

Grade: D