Lost Boys: The Tribe (2008)

You know how sometimes you pick a movie to watch not because you think it's going to be great or even good, but the opposite? You pick a movie because you think it will be so bad that the producers/director/cast knew it would be bad so they had fun with it, or conversely they didn't think it was bad so they were so earnest in their efforts that it has the same effect. I think the word I'm looking for here is 'camp'. This movie ain't got it. It's just bad.
How often do I get to say that Corey Feldman was the best actor in a film? Not very often. I'm not sure if he was actually the best actor in this film, but his character Edgar Frog, the only thing that ties this movie to the original Lost Boys film, is the only interesting character, and he's not even in that much of the movie.
I had heard rumors for a number of years that they were making a sequel to the Lost Boys. While I haven't seen that film in a long time, it has a special place in my heart - the place where 80's films, good and bad, go to live in a fuzzy haze of nostalgia. These are generally the films that shaped me as a young person, but also ones that I know haven't really held up to the test of time so I don't necessarily want to watch them again. It's hard to keep the critical eye of an adult off of the film that you loved as a kid in spite of all of it's flaws. That's why sequels, potentially, are great. Advancements in special effects can improve over those used in old films, as well as updated music, clothing styles, etc. You just hope that the sequel captures a little bit of the feel of the original. Well, this doesn't. Hell, to be honest, I haven't seen a one that does. Remember Highlander? I loved that when I was in high school, but all of the sequels were just horrible. The television show had some decent episodes, but that's not exactly high praise.
This film really had the look of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the television series. Kind of. It's like some dudes were sitting around watching a Buffy marathon all whacked out of their minds and one of them said, "You know what this show needs? Blood, lots of blood." And his buddy sitting next to him in the bean bag chair was all like, "And the hot chicks should show their tits!" And the guy stretched out on the floor looks up and says, "Wouldn't it totally rock if we could get Corey Feldman to do this? It could be like a sequel to Lost Boys or whatever." And they all start hooting and hollering and someone yells, "Fuck ya!" and his buddy yells, "Awesome!" and doesn't realize the irony of the statement. And at the window, just for a second, we glimpse a silhouette and then switch to an exterior shot showing a man in a camo jacket and straight legged jeans with three days growth of stubble, wearing sunglasses even though it's the middle of the night. He turns his head just so we can make out his profile and he utters in a deep gravelly voice, "Papa's back in business." Fade to black.

Maybe they did this for the 2010 sequel, "Lost Boys: The Thirst".

Lost Boys: The Tribe at IMDb

Looper (2012)

It would be so easy to focus solely on the time travel aspect of this movie. Granted, time travel is integral to the movie so that might not be amiss, but the conversation would invariably be how they screwed up. You know, because I know how it works. It's all those years I put in with the Doctor, don't you know.
I was really digging on the second half of the movie and the whole nod to Akira. Pierce Gagnon, who plays Cid, is one intense little actor. I hope he doesn't get offended by my referring to him as little, and send back some kind of future me to talk me out of posting this, or you know, just blowing my fucking head off. Of course not, that would be silly. I am clearly mistaking the actor for the character. But his eyes were so intense. Pierce, I mean little in the totally most respectful way.
It's hard to watch a time travel movie that also involves killers and not think of the Terminator and it's sequels. Other than one of the gat men having played a terminator in the Sarah Conner Chronicles, there's not a lot of similarity. In fact I wish there was, not that I think Looper was lacking, but that they could have done more with the Terminator films and television series dealing with the paradox of time travel. Or do they...I think Looper and Terminator take a different approach to what time travel does to the space-time continuum. Looper goes for a direct causality in a closed universe, while the Terminator goes the less direct approach and exists in a multiverse. What do I mean? In Looper if someone kills the younger self, the older self is gone because they could not logically exist, but in the Terminator, when parents are killed after the person exists, they are just forgotten by everyone else, they do not just disappear; the out-of-time person has side-stepped into an alternate universe.
Of course Looper violates it's own rules, in a pretty big way. You can't set up a mechanic that is shown to be universal and then not follow it through because you want the happy endind. Well, I guess you can because they did that in this flick, but you shouldn't. It's terribly inelegant and a bit embarrassing I imagine. And I'm not even talking about paradoxes here. I'm just talking about wrapping up the movie without following through on the consequences of removing one piece of the puzzle.
I still really like this movie, though. It took a while to get used to JGL with that fake nose bridge. It looked good and all, but I just keep watching him and thinking, "that's not what he looks like". Once I got passed that, the film was great.

Looper on IMDb

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

When this movie hit the theatres, I wasn't that excited about it. I like the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies. Sure, the third one was not the movie it could (should) have been, but I don't hold that against Raimi, I know that at the last minute his script was changed on him and he was forced to add a whole bunch of crap to make the producers happy. I liked the complete geekiness of Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker. I loved the interaction between Parker and Watson and Osborn. I did not think this needed a reboot, just a rework, going back to the original idea that Raimi had. I was looking forward to going farther along the Spider-Man timeline and discovering what his life was like after high school and college. I had hoped that it would involve Dr. Connors and the Lizard.
Instead I got a reboot that didn't have Mary Jane Watson or J. Jonah Jamison. I got a new cast, a new director and new producers. I got some British kid playing a beloved American icon. I got a revamp of the origin story with definite nods to the original version but not following it. And you know what else I got? A totally enjoyable movie.
Before the X-Men, before Batman and Superman, I was a fan of Spider-Man. I have distinct memories from when I was four years old and having a Spider-Man web shooter toy. I vaguely recall watching a Spider-Man cartoon. I would be older before I would see the 1970s live action films and the Saturday morning cartoon that teamed Spider-Man up with Iceman and Firestar. It would be late grade school before I started collecting the comic books and wearing the red knit cap with the Spider-Man suit design - the hat that covered your whole face except for your eyes and that I would wear and run around the neighborhood pretending to shoot webbing from my hands, though I don't recall ever battling any of his super foes. But then I was the only kid that would pretend to be Han Solo or Luke Skywalker. If someone else who'd have been willing to be the "good guy" I would have gladly portrayed the villain (especially Boba Fett as I recall). But the neighborhood kids were only interested in playing with the toys. That's fine, because I had the books to read and my imagination was more fertile than all of their's combined then and now.
While I was a true collector and kept all of my new comics bagged on boards, I also had a huge collection of less than new comics garnered from garage sales and flea markets. In a couple of years I was able to put together hundreds of issues of the various Spider-Man titles which I read several times. It's because of this that I can handle a reboot of the movie series and not get too upset about it. The run of the comics has seen the origin story told and retold a number of times. Peter Parker ages and matures and then is snapped back to that moment of beginning. Would it have been nice to get more than a trilogy out of the Raimi version of Spider-Man? Hell ya. But, this new kid, Andrew Garfield, did a pretty spectacular job. It was refreshing to see Gwen Stacey be the focus of his affections. And I really like the playing up of the mysterious nature of the disappearance of Richard and Mary Parker.

The Amazing Spider-Man at IMDb

Jonah Hex (2010)

I soooooo wanted this movie to be good. I recently saw Josh Brolin in Men in Black 3 and thought he was wonderful and was discussing his performance in No Country for Old Men which in turn reminded me of W. and so I searched to see what else the library had that I might watch him in. I ended up with this. Now, I am not completely unfamiliar with Jonah Hex. I read the comic as a kid, but to be completely up front mostly remember the reboot as "Hex" where the Jonah Hex character was mysteriously and inexplicably sent into the future. I also remember hearing about this movie being made as well as not recalling a single review of it. That's never a good sign. I knew that Brolin was in the movie and that Megan Fox said no to Transformers 3 to do this, a move I bet she regrets financially at least.
This movie sucked, but to be honest I'm not sure why. I thought the acting was passable, though every time I saw Will Arnett on screen I expected him to be setting up for a joke or to be making sexual innuendos - I think he's hilarious, but not who I'd pick for this kind of role, especially after seeing him in it. Megan Fox was not a disappointment and I will say that she held her own in her scenes, but really that's not saying that much. I think it got off on the wrong foot. They did some live action for like three or four minutes and then did an animated "origin of Jonah Hex" that lasted two or three minutes and then went back to live action to tell a story that didn't give a crap about characters. Honestly, the only character I cared about was the dog, and at times the Lilah character, but only at times.
This movie should have been the origin story, and the sequel should have had Hex hunting down Turnbull. As it was, there was no character building. I read the comic book, and I still didn't have enough to go on for most of it. It was a lot of, "oh that name rings a bell" and before I could figure out why it did the character was gone.
I'm chalking this one up to a bad script and bad calls made by the director. Though I would like to give special kudos to whomever's job it was to keep Megan Fox's boobs from popping out of that dress and pushing this film into an R rating.
It just donned on me how to describe this film and what I found wrong with it - it had the look of True Grit remake, the feel of the Wild, Wild West remake and the story of a Quentin Tarentino movie.

Jonah Hex at IMDb

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

One of the things I love about these movies is that nothing is wasted. If a line is said, you know it's important and the more times it is said, the more important it is. If you know this rule, then you know that not only is Batman going to save the city in the end, but you know how, even before you know what he is saving it from. That certainly doesn't lessen the entertainment value of this film - it didn't for the first two. You just know where you're going from the beginning. But, if you're paying attention to what these films are about - just listen to Alfred to hear what it's really all about - you know that Batman ends up killing Bruce or Bruce ends up killing Batman. There is no other possible outcome. So you just sit back and let the wonderful cast do their thing.
I didn't know too much about the Bane character and am still trying to clear the images of the previous incarnation from my brain. I knew that Bane was big and smart, and I knew that Bane broke Batman's back. Since that was all I knew, my hat's off to Christopher Nolan for being directly on track with carrying over the comic book to the movie. I love the way he was portrayed as the warrior-philosopher who was the ultimate true believer. The very first time that the League of Shadows and Ra's al Ghul are mentioned I began looking for al Ghul's daughter. I'm afraid I know even less about her than I do about Bane, and I think that knowledge is from the Batman animated series and not from the comic books at all. In the context of the movie, it wasn't hard to figure out who she was, since there are only two younger women in Bruce's life and one of them is Catwoman, of I should say Selina Kyle, since they never call her Catwoman.
Ah Selina Kyle. I'm not that familiar with her portrayal from the old Adam West incarnation of Batman, more than knowing that both Eartha Kitt and Lee Merriweather portrayed her. I am familiar with Michelle Pfeifer as Catwoman and also with Halle Berry's portrayal. Pfeifer opposite Keaton was good casting I thought, the two definitely had chemistry, but the portrayal was campy with a bit of the supernatural thrown in. Was that particular Batman film directed by Tim Burton? I kind of feel that it must have been since they kept going for the humor with the Catwoman character, and that's too bad, because I think that was a big part of what turned the franchise towards the campiness of the West days. I don't even know what to say about Berry's portrayal of Catwoman. That movie had nothing to do with the DC universe and the Catwoman that interacts with Batman. But, seeing Berry dressed like that I guess was enough to get the project greenlit. Anne Hathaway, under Christopher Nolan's direction takes Selina Kyle in a different direction. She's a more than capable woman forced through circumstances to do things that she doesn't want to do, but she still tries to be good, even if she doesn't always succeed, and incidentally, looks far hotter doing it than any of the previous incarnations of the character. Okay, I'll admit it, I'm crushing a little bit. Who knows, maybe when she's tired of hanging out with Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and Johnny Depp she'll read this post and look me up.
I like the way the movie wraps, with a hint that there might be more films to come. I've been hearing that Batman will be in the upcoming Justice League of America movie. But, I've also heard that Joseph Gordon-Levitt won't be playing Batman. I didn't know why that was significant until tonight. After I heard the rumor, I did look and officially there is not one attached to the project yet. I'm hoping that since Christopher Nolan is rebooting Superman this upcoming Summer that he will be involved with JLA movie. At the very least, I hope they use his version of Batman and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I will want them to use his version of Superman as well. What I really hope is that this means that there is a Wonder Woman movie in the works that will drop before the JLA movie. There is already a Green Lantern film and while it wasn't the greatest, it was as good as Thor, which Marvel seemed to like just fine as a precursor to the Avengers. What other movies do we need? None. I'm going there. We do not need a Flash movie. I always thought the character was only tolerable as part of a team. We do not need a Hawkman movie. I've always liked this character, and Hawkgirl/woman too, but, they've never been commercially viable for some reason, except as part of a combo. Plastic Man? Can't stand the character. The Martian Manhunter? That would be pretty sweet, but it's never going to happen before the JLA. Maybe afterwards if it's a big success and he's a character in the JLA movie. Aquaman? That could be an awesome movie or an awesomely sucky movie. IF they play him as the Prince or King of Atlantis who begrudgingly works with the surface worlders for a joint goal, that might work. Who will the JLA be up against? I never bought the notion that the individual super villains would band together to take over the world worked, past two or three working together and then only the correct two or three. Nearly all of the villains are megalomaniacs, who by definition don't play well with others. I think the best option is Darkseid and his ilk trying to conquer the world. That does seem a bit like the premise for the Avengers movie now that I write it, but hey, it worked for Marvel, it can work for DC. What cannot happen is the JLA going the "Super Friends" route else I will be taking the form of someone who isn't going to watch it.

The Dark Knight Rises on IMDb

The Dark Knight (2008)

One thing really bothers me about this movie, in fact it bothers me in all movies where they do this particular thing, and that's sub in one actor for another. In Batman Begins, the character of Rachel Dawes was played wonderfully by Katie Holmes. In The Dark Knight, the character of Rachel Dawes was played wonderfully by Maggie Gyllenhall. Where's the problem? I spent most of the movie looking at Maggie and thinking about how she wasn't Katie. I would have been fine if either one had played Rachel Dawes in both movies, but it sticks in my craw that they swapped in one actor for another as if it didn't matter. Maybe there was a really good reason why Katie couldn't back for this film and I should just get over it, but I kind of feel like the original Batman movies, though of course this movie was still awesome. Oh, and X-Men franchise, don't think I'm not going to name names, and let it slip how you've had Kitty Pryde played by three different actresses in three films, when we all know it should have been Ellen Page all along.
There is one other thing... [removed because I decided it's between me and the other person, not me and the internet]...
I liked The Dark Knight. I think it was one of the best sequels I've ever seen. The themes of the first movie are continued and expanded upon. Characters undergo further development. The action was more intense and even the drama was more intense. It does clock in at almost 15 minutes longer than the first movie, and i'm pretty sure that was to add more chase scenes which to be honest I could have done without quite so much, but at least they looked cool.
Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent and Heath Ledger as the Joker are the two stand out performances of the movie. They both step right up to the line and push at it, but don't go over it. They both get so intense at times, and I find most of their screen time riveting. They are quite a contrast from Tommy Lee Jones and Jack Pallance in the respective roles.
I thought the character of Gordon, first Lieutenant and then Commissioner, was the most interesting. I think it says a lot about Gary Oldman as an actor that I totally forgot that I was watching him and just thought about Gordon. It's very interesting to see this character walk the fine line of legality versus illegality and legality versus justice. He has a strong moral sense that allows him to break minor rules in order to achieve more important goals, first and foremost being that he works directly with Batman even though the police force is technically hunting the 'vigilante' Batman.
I love that Nestor Carbonell plays the mayor of Gotham. The other project that I know this actor from is the live action Tick televsion show, where he played the (not so) super hero Bat-manuel, where he spends all of his time trying to use his super hero persona and super suit and super car to pick up women. I doubt that had anything to do with him getting cast, but I'm amused by it.

The Dark Knight on IMDb

Batman Begins (2005)

Long before I discovered the X-Men or even the comic book version of Spider-man, there was Superman and Batman. Superman was simplistic and moralistic even to me as a young boy. It was so clear cut because it was a story about good versus evil. Every time out. Batman was more complex, more dark. It dealt with the notion of justice as well as good versus evil. What I think I found to be most interesting was that Batman/Bruce Wayne questioned himself about his beliefs and convictions. Now, somewhere around the age of 11 or 12 I discovered the "back catalog" of both Batman and Superman thanks to my local library and I discovered that earlier incarnations had been very silly at times, but most shockingly, more alike than they were now, er, then in the mid-80s. Just as I discovered the historical Superman and Batman, I started collecting more books including the Justice League pf America which featured both heroes, but used Superman as a tank and Batman as the mad-scientist or engineer. I started to lose interest, when the Batman, Year One storyline hit. It was brilliant. It ended and so did my subscription to Batman and not much later to all comics.
I wasn't just a fan of Batman in comic books, but the early serials and the show with Adam West. They weren't the same quality as the comic books, but historically they matched the flavor of the time they were created. But then something wonderful happened. Tim Burton made a Batman movie. My buddy and I went and saw it in the old Fox Theatre in Dallas. It was so enthralling that I didn't even notice how the broken down seats gave you a back ache by the end of the first hour. Michael Keaton was a new kind of Batman, the kind I had wanted to see, moody and complex, well more complex than he had been portrayed before. I remember two things about that movie 25 years or so on, first being that I didn't much want to go to the movies with that friend again because he was not a good movie watcher, and that while we both liked the movie, it was for two very different reasons. I predominantly liked the scenery - Tim Burton's Gotham City was indeed Gothic and a great backdrop for the Batman tale, but ultimately I had found the movie not serious enough. Batman was indeed darker than the Adam West version, but Bruce Wayne was distracted and not handsome enough (sorry Michael Keaton) and Kim Bassinger and Jack Palance were throwbacks to the West show. Little did I know what was to come with these movies. My friend? He liked the movie because he had never read Batman before. This was earth-shattering stuff for him. But then, getting his new model railroad magazine and hearing the latest Billy Joel song were about as exciting as his life got at that point.
I won't say that I didn't watch or even enjoy the other Batman movies, they were a fun romp, equivalent to a super hero James Bond (Bond before Daniel Craig of course).
Fast forward to a British bloke who wants to make a new Batman movie, a reboot, that takes the movie along a darker path than the previous franchise. I was completely hooked. Once names started dropping as to which stars were attaching themselves to this project, I became more and more excited. But, if The Phantom Menace was good for anything, it was good for teaching us not to get our hopes up. When Batman Begins finally hit the screen I was completely bi-polar about it. I knew it was going to be brilliant. I knew it was going to be horrible. Secretly I hoped that it split the difference, I could live with that.
To my great surprise, this turned out to be one of the best action movies I've ever seen, and I think the best super hero movie. I don't just mean up to that point, I think this might be the best super hero film. I just checked my movie shelf, and the only movie that comes really close is Hellboy (if Spawn had been consistent throughout, it would be the number two film). Yes. I'm sure about this. The Marvel movies have all been real-worldified or are just not great or both. The DC movies are all over the place, but one thing is consistent, they're not great, but most of them are entertaining enough, the exception being the Watchmen which misses the mark on the comic book in a couple of ways, but is one of the best super hero movies I've seen. Then you have the independents - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tank Girl, Aeon Flux, Mystery Men - all entertaining and funny, with the exception of Aeon Flux which was also real-worldified, but great because of Charlize Theron. The other movies with super heroes in my collection at least are not tied to a comic book and entertaining enough, but not really in competition.
Christian Bale is a very intense actor. I remember first becoming aware of him for a film called the Thin Man where he played the leading role and must have lost 60 or 70 pounds to play the role - he looked like a strong wind was going to snap him in two. He brings the same intensity to Batman Begins. He very definitely is playing Batman who has a secret identity of Bruce Wayne instead of the other way around. I think that's magnificent. This is the darker Batman that I've wanted to see for the last 25 years.
The list of supporting actors in this film is like a who's who of the craft's best: Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman and, yes, Katie Holmes. Cillian Murphy, Rutger Hauer and Tom Wilkinson round out the main characters and the actors whom I am familiar with and all three really stepped up to the bar in their performances.
The only complaint I have about this film is the notion of Ra's al Ghul being either played by a Westerner or being so easily defeated and replaced. In the comic book, at least back when I was still reading the series, Ra's al Ghul was a mystic who had come across a way to extend his life to hundreds of years long, and was smarter, faster and stronger than everyone around him, and was also, not English. But, in the context of this movie, this rendition of al Ghul was certainly formidable and an interesting take on the character - I guess achieving his immortality by being the namesake and not the man.
I forget when I learned that this was the first of a trilogy by Christopher Nolan. I was certainly excited, though. Everything that happened likely happened with the endgame in mind, as opposed to the earlier open-ended goofballness. If the next two films were half as good as this one, this would be the best super heor trilogy ever.

Batman Begins at IMDb

Men In Black 3 (2012)

You know what I love about these movies? Aside from the song by Will Smith that roles with the credits, that is. I like that they follow their own logic. The rules of physics apply, as we currently know them, until they're not convenient anymore, and then J or K, usually K, pulls out or acquires some gizmo that they need to get the job done in a way that is not explained by science. It just does whatever needs to be done, with as many steps before it as necessary to fill up the movie. I'm not even being critical about this, I dig it. This is sci-fi comedy, or as I like to think of it, sci-co. See what I did there? With the play on sounds? Huh? Oh. I thought you weren't laughing 'cause you didn't get it. But, you're just saying it wasn't funny OR clever. Gotcha.
I'm writing this particular version of the post because it most likely leads to the possible future that one thing happens that I really, really want to happen; unless this is the time that you get the phone call right in the middle of reading this and never get back to it and end up taking that job in Tuscaloosa where you end up putting on a lot of weight because you're depressed for some unknowable reason and eat to fill the gaping hole left by not finishing this post; or the other one with the power outage that happens right after you finish the post and it ruins your refrigerator and on your way to get a new one you get into a fender bender with the woman with two small children and the youngest child, her daughter ends up becoming an automotive engineer instead of a research epidemiologist and therefore never develops the serum to protect most of humanity from the plague that starts the zombie apocalypse. If those two things come about, I guarantee I have not ended up with what I want. That's the crazy thing about time travel and timelines. Movies always deal with the big things that are typically in a very clear causal line back to an event that we'll call event-prime that needs to be changed or prevented from changing so that the horrible outcome won't occur. A lot of these same movies have all kinds of things happening with the time travelers that end up not effecting anything. Event-prime to the horrible event or to the happy event is always A then B then C, rarely anything more than 3 steps, too. In this case, event-prime is saving an alien from being murdered by another alien. If successful, this leads to Agent K in direct conflict with the assassin, and if K is successful, we get the happy ending. If the event-prime goes sour, the secondary even never takes place and so we get the horrible outcome. But, even if event-prime goes well, the secondary event can still go bad. Sometimes the movies present with a false event-prime. We know it's false because it is always a missed opportunity, and not one that fails.
But, is this what really is going on in the movie? No, I don't think so. I think it's more like the story version of a Rube Goldberg device. Event-prime happens - and it's almost always before the time travel occurs - starts a complex and often convoluted chain of events that lead to the desired outcome. I'm tempted to go all meta and say that by the very nature of movies, i.e. that they are prepared in advance for our viewing pleasure, prevents it from being anything but a carefully crafted series of events that have to go the way they do. Instead I will just look at it in terms of the movie reality. In other words, I'm saying that the failures have to happen in order to get the desired outcome. In this movie, if J had made it on time to stop the first murder, he likely would have been killed because he didn't know how much of a bad-ass Boris was nor did he have a way to use his time travel device. It had to be as difficult between J and K in the beginning as it was so that they would get the satisfactory emotional outcome later. In movies, everything happens for a reason. Everything. Are there different ways that things could have gone that would have led to the desired outcome? Most likely, yes, but there was some drawback to them, like having the movie be only 20 minutes long instead of 100 minutes long; or maybe more serious like the desired outcome is achieved but Detroit is accidentally blown up.
If this is the reality for someone knocks on your door in three, two, one, now. Don't answer. That so-called organic cleaner is a scam.
The addition of Emma Thompson as O who is the new director, is brilliant. If there is anything that lady can not do or do and not look sexy doing it, I don't know what it is and neither does anyone else. I hope she comes back for MIB4. I also liked David Rasche as X. Remember when he was Sledgehammer? I have these vague memories of that show, mostly my thoughts that it was awesome, because like Max Headroom, it was on later than my mom normally let me watch t.v., but for some reason I could watch it if I didn't let my little brother know. Sorry, bro. I guess the secret is out. For the record, mom also let me watch Hogan's Heroes while you were in Headstart, and Magnum P.I. while you were still in grade school and I was at the junior high. Based on my experience with tracking down an episode of Max Headroom in the last year and discovering that it wasn't terribly good, I suspect Sledgehammer will not be what I thought it was as a kid. Oh well. I'm perfectly content to let 10 year old me have those shows as cherished memories and adult me to think they kind of suck and to have both of these things occur simultaneously. I bet a lot of those shows totally sucked - like Automan, Manimal and Rip Tide. Actually, I happen to know that Rip Tide was on for four seasons, so it most likely sucked in a different way, the way that the Fall Guy sucks to the grown up me, the suckage from having shows only being remarkable by who the guest star is this week. Can you say A-Team or Buck Rogers (or the Electric Kid)?
Damn that Gil Gerard, he almost made me forget to mention Josh freakin' Brolin. Fortunately a future version of myself has traveled back in time to take care of this. Brolin was awesome. He was more Tommy Lee Jones than Jones was. It's just like when he played the Prez in W. He nailed the accent and the mannerisms so completely that you forgot who he really was. Kudos, Mr. Brolin.
Oh, and surprisingly, I didn't hate Bill Hader in this movie. Huh. First times and all that.
Also, I love that chocolate milk is what people who have experienced a timeline fracture crave. Moo.

Men In Black 3 on IMDb

Battleship (2012)

I went into this with two things on my mind. First, I will watch any movie with Liam Neeson and at the very least enjoy his scenes. Second, I played the game Battleship often enough to realize that a game based upon it is like basing a game on yahtzee - it's mostly random with strategy only coming into play based upon your results. This thinking very effectively set the bar low. It became almost a logical impossibility that I could watch this movie and not be entertained.
Something happened while watching this movie - I actually found myself liking it. Sure, the story is a bit predictable, but that didn't stop me from liking Independence Day or Minority Report, and it didn't stop me from liking this film. For an Action/Adventure movie, it had surprisingly good acting and almost know catch-phrasism. Taylor Kitsch in the starring role was a very pleasant experience, supported by Rihanna and Alexander Skarsgard (who it turns out is more than just a sexy vampire) who both do an excellent job.
The special F/X were top of the line, and that's good since they no doubt spent top dollar on this bad boy. The aliens were pretty cool. They were us with more thumbs and more toys. The alien ships and the way they moved, kind of like giant water skeeters, was not something I'd seen done before. I know that science fiction isn't all about seeing a new spin on an old theme, but sci-fi action/adventure often is, and this movie offers that. The alien grinder balls were ingenious. I don't know how they come up with that concept, but it seems like something you might see in a comic book, but far more effective, as drilling devices in comic books when not being used for transportation have a way of crapping out or not doing very much damage. These grinders though were pretty kick ass.
This movie did something different from most alien versus earth movies, they had the aliens be fallible. In your typical AVE movie, the aliens are all powerful until the earthers discover the one weakness that will lead to their ultimate downfall, the alien Achilles' tendon if you will. But in Battleship, the aliens screw up right off the bat by running into space debris and destroying one of their own ships. Sure, the plot needs for that ship to be destroyed in order to work, but the ship's destruction is believable and I think it works.
I was thinking about Michael Bey while watching this film. I know, god help me. There was more than one occasion when the visual effects reminded me of one or more of his Transformers films, yet this film still managed to be largely character driven, for an action/adventure movie at least. I concluded that I'm glad taht Bey did not direct this, but also that I hope he watched this and is moved by the use of characters and lack of catch phrases for Transformers 4.

Battleship at IMDb

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (2012)

Maybe this says more about me than the movie, but I spent a fair portion of this film worried that future generation were going to take this movie the wrong way and think people from the first part of the 21st century really believed in vampires and that Abraham Lincoln hunted them. Or maybe when the apes have risen up to run the world while keeping humans as slaves and food for their pet vampires, they'll just watch this and laugh, thinking about how we humans were always so busy worrying about the vampires that we failed to see what was going on right under our noses until it was too late and an orangutan had been nominated as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, but the first gorilla President.
I also found myself questioning the facts of the movie. Not the notion that there were vampires, or that Abraham Lincoln was a hunter of those vampires. There probably aren't vampires, but if there are I think we will find that Abraham Lincoln did indeed hunt them, much the same way that George Washington fought valiantly against the British werewolves in the War of Independence. No, I was hung up on whether Mary Todd was really dating Stephen Douglas when she met Abraham Lincoln and if Harriet Tubman was portrayed as the correct age when she meets Lincoln. I decided that she wasn't, if she was human, but if she was one of the vampire freedom fighters who hated the bad guy vampires that she looked about right.
I was a wee bit bothered by the way the vampires were handled. I understand that to weave them into history or to expose their place in history I should say, that it is necessary to have them be out and about in daylight, but really? Vampires in daylight? Why not just make them all sparkly? I don't understand why the vampires just don't take over. They can walk in the light of the sun and turn invisible at will, not to mention being super humanly strong and fast. To create new vampires they just have to non-fatally bite someone who is not pure of heart. How could they not take over? Also, if the oldest vampire in the movie is five thousand years old, but the problem with silver didn't start until Judas betrayed Jesus, what was he doing for three thousand years?
It just occurred to me that this could be the blog post that leads to the inevitable future I fear. A vampire reads this and realizes, "holy shit! he's right! why am I pretending to be a pharmacist when I can just go to any frat party on any college campus and easily create several hundred news vampires." And then the vampire does this or something similar and the vampires start multiplying at a horrendous rate and the final war between humans and vampires begins. But, just as humans are about to be wiped out out and or enslaved forever, our newest President, Chelsea Clinton Vampire Hunter, destroys the vampire lord in a horrendous battle aboard Air Force One. She reveals to the public the use of silver against the vampire oppressors and the humans win just barely. Now, completely exhausted from fighting the vampires, the apes rise up and begin their take over of the world. I guess that would be my bad.
On the other hand, what if it's this post that convinces Chelsea Clinton to come clean about the vampire menace and start producing youtube videos that shows everyone in the world how to slay vampires with her gangnam style moves? In that case, you're welcome.
I have to say, the pressure of the fate of the human race aside, it was nice to see someone taking it to the vampires without using a katana. Katanas are so 20th century when it comes to dealing destruction to vampires. In the 21st century, its all about personalizing and using what's at hand, whether it be a silver bladed axe-shot gun or a nail gun shooting silver nails. That's how we roll.

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter at IMDb

The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012)

Everyone loves Aardman films. Everyone loves pirates. Therefore, it follows that everyone will love an Aardman film about pirates. It's logic, bitches. Deal with it.
This film is reminiscent of Aardman's Chicken Run more than any of the Wallace and Grommet films, so it doesn't quite have the same look as W & G. You can still tell it's an Aardman film, but the humans look more like humans, though there was not a single mention of Wensleydale. Like Chicken Run it's a bit of an adventure where the main character must prove he's worthy of his mates. It was a little formulaic, I guess, but that did not stop me from enjoying myself.
Watching this movie, I kept thinking what I always think during Aardman movies, and that is you have to really love what you're doing to do a stop motion feature length film. And with clay or putty or whatever they sculpt in? You have to be downright obsessive. I think that love of the craft really shows through. Could this be done with computer animation? Probably. Certainly parts of the film were, like the water and skies. To be honest, computer animation is advanced enough that they could have done the whole thing digitally and if they did it is so good that I can't tell. But, to me the characters, props and most of the sets look like Aardman had a hand in them. Literally.
The voice actors do a wonderful job. Hugh Grant, David Tennant, Martin Freeman and Imelda Stauntos are the four mains and are superb. I'm not the least surprised since I like them in live action roles. That's not always the case, the crossing over I mean. Not all actors can pull off the voice acting. *cough* Adam Sandler *cough*. The only voice that stuck out to me was Jeremy Piven and not because he did a bad job or anything. He did stick out though, as the American, but I was really trying to decide if it was him or Jason Lee. And if that's the only thing I'm concerned about watching a film, well damn, it's a pretty good film.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits at IMDb

The Raven (2012)

For full disclosure, I have to state right off the top that I'm a fan of John Cusack. I also quite like Edgar Allen Poe, mostly for his writing, but also because we share the same middle name and our names have the same meter: Edgar Allen Poe - Eric Allen Cone.
I must also confess that while I knew a little of the life of Poe, I knew nothing of the end of his life. The opening narrative of the movie says that Poe was found delusional on a park bench in Baltimore and nothing was known of his last few days alive. I suspect that the events leading up to the start of the movie are based on what was really known about Poe. It just has the feel to it. This movie is a period piece and to my eye they went to a level of detail that would make even the BBC folks nod with approval. You don't put that much effort into realism just to mess with what is known about Poe. In furthering my confession I write this blog entry offline (like I do almost all of my entries) mostly because it's more convenient for me, but also because I like the irony. One thing that it does not afford me easy access to reference materials. So, while I have the collected works of Mr. Poe right here to peruse, I only have my knowledge from a lifetime ago from some class I took where I learned that Poe's wife died of consumption.
Disclosures and confessions behind us for now, let's get down to the nitty and the gritty. I like this movie. It was a historical thriller that did not go the route of the Sherlock Holmes movies with the over-the-top special effects and the slo-mo camera work revolving around the character because somebody thought the Matrix looked cool. I'm not saying it didn't look cool, 'cause it did, but at the same time is that really the best way to tell a Sherlock Holmes tale? Instead, the action in The Raven feels very believable and that's a good thing.
As far as the acting goes, John Cusack is the weak link of the movie. Seriously, this is not a complaint. I thought Mr. Cusack did a fine job, but the other actors, particularly Brendan Gleeson as Captain Hamilton, were superb. I'm not familiar with Luke Evans, but he does a good "intense". He also looks good with his shirt off. Just saying. I would watch other movies that followed the career of the character he plays in this movie, Inspector Fields, who is very much like Detective Murdoch from the Murdoch Mysteries television series and movies but grittier and more, um yeah I'm going to say it, intense. The last actor I wanted to mention is Sam Hazeldine, who pulls off a very good Hugo Weaving imitation at the end of the film. Maybe it's not an imitation, but I like the low-pitched voice and almost excruciatingly articulate pronunciations.
There is one thing about this movie that really chapped my hide. You're watching the resolution of the film, and if you're me, you're pretty satisfied with what you just watched. BAM! The credits start and it's this hardish rock song with some industrial elements and the graphics are abstract cgi of geometric ravens landing in piles as they die. What the fuck? This doesn't fit with the rest of the movie in either sound of look, and it doesn't fit with the second half of the credits. This really left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. So, watch the movie, skip the credits.

The Raven at IMDb

The 4400 Season 1 Disk 2

Episode 3: Becoming
The flavor of the week this week is serial killer. Not just ol' serial killer, but one who convinces others that they're the real serial killer, and all he has to do is talk to the person for a little bit.
We also get introduced to Jordan Collier, one of the 4400 who is using his gift to get rich and ostensibly help out everyone else from the 4400. Of course, being the good television viewer that I am, I can recognize this kind of setup a mile away. We know this Collier's good will turn to no good, and then in the next season, the no good will have been revealed through some secret to be good after all. That kind of thing.

Episode 4: Trial by Fire
There's a new sheriff in town, pilgrim. And he's here with carte blanche to do whatever the hell he wants. Like you might expect this character to be, youngish, good looking, a coldhearted prick, there was something added to show us this was not the character to root for, and that something is that he is completely incompetent. He's only seeing to further his career so he doesn't think much about the ramifications of his own actions. He can't quite seem to believe that the other agents aren't lining up to back him.

Episode 5: White Light
I'm not sure if I should be proud of the show for making us think that something was a red herring but it really wasn't and therefore my viewing enjoyment is enhanced incrementally in that area, or if I should be pissed off because I'm doing so much extra work to make the show interesting. Like he can't possibly be the answer because that's too obvious, so it must be a red herring. But then towards the end when it's obvious that the red herring is not a herring of any kind and I decide to credit the director and cast for making me think that something that wasn't a red herring actually was a red herring just to throw us off because it wan't a red herring at all. If none of this made sense to you, to not worry

The 4400 at IMDb

The 4400 Season 1 Disk 1

Episode 1: The Pilot
The premise of the show is great, 4400 people who have disappeared between 1946 and the present day, suddenly reappear en masse. For each of the returning 4400, no time has passed at all. Now, let them loose back into the population, stir and you have a t.v. show. Plus, only five of the returnees had their story told, so, we could have 880 episodes of just the first bit of time back and we wouldn't even have to repeat a character. Considering that this season was only 5 episodes long, that's 126 seasons of the show right there.
Of course, that assumes that all of the characters are roughly the same when it comes to being interesting and what are the odds of that? Plus, they might actually follow one of the characters throughout their story.

Episode 2: The New and Improved Carl Morrissey
We're still following four of the five from the pilot episode, so much for my plan for how many shows they could get out of this concept. Does this also mean that each episode will have a new cast-member-of-the-week? And if so, are they all going to be redshirts?
We're following, Maya an eight year old clairvoyant who may or may not have had these tendencies before she was taken (maybe I'm reading too much into a scene with her in the pilot), we have Sean who is 17 and can heal with his touch, we have Lily a 30-something mom-to-be that has a baby who can take empathic readings of a place and convey them to Lily, and we have Richard who is a man in his mid-thirties and hasn't yet revealed his ability. The other two members of the 4400 that have been shown also have abilities. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the majority if not entirety of the 4400 have some kind of special power.

The 4400 on IMDb

Moneyball (2011)

I was so excited about this movie when it first came out on video. A movie about statistics, starring Matt Damon. What could be better? Sweet, baseball is a good vehicle for statistics since even casual fans know that lots of statistics are involved. Damon could play the GM or something... Then I got on the rather long waiting list and heard from the person placing the hold that this was a great movie, and wasn't Brad Pitt so great because he produced the movie. My immediate thought was that makes sense, Pitt and Damon are buddies from the Oceans movies, working together would be fun for them. But, then she finished that he [Brad Pitt] was great starring in it, too. I was so disappointed that I took my name off the list. Now, do go thinking that I'm a Pitt hater, because I'm not. I like his films, it's just that I see him as more of the action hero or comedic action buffoon kind of guy. I did not see this movie being either full of action or comedic buffoonery.
Everyone I know that saw this film really liked it, so I knew that it would go back on my list of films to watch eventually. But then I forgot about, because I actually do keep a list, and I had forgotten to put it back on after I cancelled the hold.
I put my name back on the hold list and the movie came in a reasonable amount of time because it wasn't new anymore. I checked it out and looked forward to watching it with dinner that night, and while reading the back of the DVD box almost talked myself out of watching it at all because, right after Pitt's name is Jonah Hill. I don't like Jonah Hill, by which I mean I'm sure he's a nice enough guy and all, but I don't like his characters with the exception of XXX, where he is just doing voice over work.
Fortunately after a couple of days I put the disk and played it. It was a good film. Not a great film, but a good one. I'm not a fan of sports films as a genre, but there wasn't enough baseball in this. There were certainly not enough statistics. I wish that there had been less of Bailey and his daughter and more of baseball and people either cutting down the A's especially when they were doing poorly, or more baseball and people being surprised when the A's were doing good.
This movie would have been better if Pitt had stuck to producing and had cast Matt Damon in the lead. I'm just saying. And somebody else instead of Hill, whom I actually didn't hate in this role, but I did feel it was like the other Hill characters except that this one wore a suit.
If you're in the mood for a film about baseball, watch Field of Dreams or Bull Durham. And if you want a film that has just as much math in it as this one does, I recommend you go for Good Will Hunting, and not just because it has Damon in the lead. But, if you've seen all of those, then watch this film.

Moneyball at IMDb

Jekyll Season 1 Disk 2

Episode 4:
This was another flashback laden episode that showed us Tom and Claire met and how Hyde's first appearance came about. They did a much better job of making it obvious to the viewer this time and I could actually follow the story quite easily. It was nice to see that at least one of the characters from the first episode, the detective Miranda, has dropped her cheekiness and is now playing a very straight role, though her partner Min is still cheeky but it's implied that she's a bit soft in the head.
The show is very serious now. none of Hyde's look-at-me-I'm-Jim-Carey-from-the-Mask antics, but instead it's all rage and violence. That suits me fine. It gives Nesbitt a chance to show off his acting chops a bit more, adding to his already impressive performance.
There's a bit of a philosophical or perhaps physiological question that the show has raised. We've known from the first episode that Hyde is actually physically different from Jackman - he's two inches taller, a littler narrower across the shoulder, different colored hair and different hairline and different colored eyes. Clair tells the friend that introduced her to Jackman that every time Jackman gets his rocks off, his eyes go all black. This, we have been lead to believe is one of the several signs that Hyde is in control. But, it is also before the first time that Jackman is aware of Hyde, implying that it's before the first full manifestation. The question I have is, is there a Hyde light? I am just going to make a guess here, but I'm thinking if a woman notices her man's eyes change colors while having sex that she is probably going to notice that he appears to grow two inches taller. Either she doesn't, because it would have certainly been a strong memory if not actually freaking her shit out, or it doesn't happen, which means there is a Hyde light. If there is a Hyde light, is the whole notion that Jackman can be stabilized in one of the forms either as Jackman OR as Hyde a big red herring?

Episode 5:
Hyde has taken over and Jackman thought to be dead, well deleted as the scientist puts it. But, you know how television shows work, the earlier in the episode and the louder the pronouncement is made, the more likely it is to be proven inaccurate. That also goes for how many times they repeat something.
Hyde is able to access Jackman's memories like watching a digital recording of the events, and after a slap from Claire, he can access the original Dr. Jekyll's memories as well. When he does this, he finds that the kitchen maid for Jekyll, called Alice, looks exactly like Claire, and she was the key for the original Mr. Hyde, or is he the original still. They do nothing to answer the question as to the origins of Jackman.
Hyde pulls one over on the company except for the new evil boss lady. Well, new to the view, but she appears to be the head boss and it at for quite a while. She appears to be as smart and devious as the previous dude was annoying. That should make for some nice conflict.

Episode 6:
They changed the opening credits to call the series "Hyde" for this episode instead of "Jekyll". That kind of lets you think there's going to be a bit of finality. And of course that plays out.
We finally find out where the cloning sub-plot comes in, and I suspected, Jackman is not a clone. Nor does he turn out to be the original Dr. Jekyll, reborn or otherwise. He's just a guy who is the descendant, one of many, of Jekyll/Hyde.
The story gets wrapped up quite nicely. Do they leave us a couple of things that could be the mysteries of a  further series? Yes, they do. Does it effect the arc of this series to not know the answers to any of those questions? No, it doesn't.

Special Feature: Jeckyll, the Story Re-told
I don't normally comment about the special features. What would I say? "Just like every other featurette ever, they all said this was the best project they've ever worked on and the people they worked with the best ever."? But, I do want to comment about the interview with James Nesbitt. It's shot at the zoo, and Nexbitt is sitting in front of the black panther display, with a large window separating him from the large cat. The cat is just pacing back and forth the whole time looking through, or it walks back and gets up on a stump to get e better view, and at that very end of the interview, the panther has laid down beside Nesbitt (the other side of the glass of course) and is watching the action just like a house cat would. That really struck my fancy and made this featurette watching all the way through to the end.

Jekyll at IMDb

Jekyll Season 1 Disk 1

Episode 1:
As you can probably surmise from the name of this show, it's a retelling of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Much like the recent reboot of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson characters in the show Sherlock, Jekyll is set in modern times, essentially 'today' and relies heavily on current technology to tell the story.
You can tell right off the bat that this show is a drama, but it's hard to pin that down, as I kept excepted funny to happen by the way several of the actors Meera Syal and Fenella Woolgar as the private detectives Miranda and Min, and Patterson Joseph who is completely over the top as Banjamin Lennox. I was really having a hard time deciding if they were spoofing what was going on, playing coy (which you by now I blame on the director) or if they were being straight up so that we would have something very different from how the characters turn out later in the series.
The two women in the Doctor's life, that would be Dr. Tom Jackman played James Nesbitt, are the wife, Claire played by Gina Bellman and the assistant Katherine Reimer played by Michelle Ryan. Both characters are extremely serious all the time and aren't going for the over the top shtick at all, which makes their performances quote stand out from the others.
The main character, or is that characters, of Jackman/Hyde is played marvelously by Nesbitt. What the man can do with just a pair of lifts in his shoes is quite impressive. I really like the way that we see the Hyde part of ther personality evolve over the course of the episode, while  the Jackman part is fighting just to hold on.
Oh, and because they make such a big deal out of showing the Claire and Katherine characters wearing tight sweaters, putting on tight sweaters or taking off tight sweaters, I feel I should say something about it, and I guess that something is like, 'hey, I noticed. I like sweaters.' or something like that.

Episode 2:
This time out, we get the first big reveal, well, I guess round of reveals. There are no surprises this time out, the guy you think is keeping tabs on him is keeping tabs on him, the girl you think is really on his side even though the cut shots make her appear to be working against him really is on his side.
Benjamin Lennox is quite the character, much more complex than his silly accent would have you believe (by silly, I mean a Southern accent), I mean that's why he keeps slipping in and out of the accent right? Because we're seeing a complex character? Oh. We're not? That is really too bad.
My general impression of this ep is "poor lion". Hunt the people, not the big kitty cats.

Episode 3:
Finally, we get some movement on the story and yet they manage to make you feel like you're not getting movement because there is too much movement. Let me explain. Jackman goes to his friend's house, the friend who has been keeping tabs on him for the last 20 plus years for the secret organization that we don't yet have a name for. Mrs. Jackman is there and gets to see her husband transform into Hyde and proves that she is as tough as Hyde. When the organization comes to take Hyde in, Hyde kills the annoying Lennox who is for no reason that I have been able to discern threatening to kill the Jackman family. That is what hapens in the story. What we see on screen is continuous flashing back and flashing forward and many small scenes or parts of scenes played multiple times. Sometimes it was easy to follow, but often is was just difficult enough to be a real distraction.
One thing that is holding true, Hyde is a lot more interesting than Jackman.

Jekyll on IMDb

More Cult Classics

Sex Madness (1934)

Apparently down through the ages there has been a menace worse than the worst criminal, and that menace is...Syphilis. In this movie we will learn all about this evil, I presumed.
What we really learned was that New York leads to killing babies, or perhaps its being in burlesque anywhere that leads to babies dying.
This movies forward said the only way to save the youth from syphilis was through education, but the movie was really all about how their are lots of 'quack' doctors out there who claim they can cure syphilis but are really just stealing the money of their patients.
To be honest, I'm not really sure what this movie was saying. I don't they mentioned the word sex once, only that people needed to not be afraid of having the important talks. I guess that's an euphemism for sex.


Slaves in Bondage (1936)

Since all of the others movies of this Cult Classics collection have all been either anti something or pro something, so that I expected that this would be the same kind of film. But, it wasn't.
This film is about a couple of small time gangsters that in the start of the film at least are kidnapping girls to use as prostitutes. But they don't seem much like thugs, more like shysters. They do employ a bunch of thugs and at one point have a couple kill another one.
The premise is that Belle Harris runs a manicure salon, and puts ads in small town newspapers for jobs for pretty girls no experience necessary. The girls show up, Belle checks them out, if they're pretty they end up getting jobs as "entertainers" or are forced into prostitution.
Belle's partner Jim Harris does a bunch of other illegal things - like kidnapping the girl at the start. He's an all around bad guy. He ends up setting his sights on the heroine of the tale, Donna who has come to the city with her boyfriend Phil who wants to be a reporter.
Donna spurns Jim's advances, so Jim frames Phil to get him out of the picture and then tries to alternatively woo Donna or get her to work for him, and eventually decides to force himself on her, but by then Donna has talked to the local paper, and the editor called the police and they rescue her in a nick of time. All the bad guys go to jail, Phil gets the job and he Donna are to be married.
There was a point where I thought that there might be a message to the film, but it was a false alarm.
I can't believe I watched the whole thing. It helps that it was only 67 minutes long, but still. This was the best of the films so far, but that's not saying much. Interestingly, this film showed a dance number and 3 different vaudeville acts that were tangential to the story at best, but had they not been there, the movie would have only 50 minutes long.
These films were fun when I was younger, not this one in particular, as I've never seen it before, but these old cult classics that were so bad that they were good because you'd sit around with a bunch of friends at mock it while you watched, usually with some alcohol involved. But most of the films that I enjoyed were from the 50s, all of the flicks from earlier are down right depressing to watch. I'm sure watching them by myself sober is a mitigating factor as well. They just make me glad that I can exercise the right to make this one my last one.

3 Cult Classics

The Cocaine Fiends (1936)

This film's purpose is to expose the "Dope Evil", which totally had different connotations 76 years ago, I'm guessing. This little flick was directed by Wm. A. O'Connor and stars Lois January and Noel Madison, which to me sound like 1930s porn names (I'm sure they were nice ladies, regardless).
It's really hard to tell where the quality issues should be applied to - did the original movie have such horribly shot night scenes, or was it from transferring it to video, and then later to DVD? I'll cut the film some slack, since it's so old. But, not for the sound. I'm guessing they miked all the floors or even more likely over-dubbed the walking/running sounds, because they aer so damned loud. That, or everyone in the 30s were wearing tap shoes.
Newsflash, the 'head ache powder' is really dope. I repeat head ache powder is really dope, "co-caine", "kit-kat mix". Also, when on the head ache powder, everything is swell. That is until Nick doesn't marry you, and oh by the way, the hotel you're staying in is really a brothel.
Also, "questing" is an old, seldom used word that means looking or searching. I should tell all my gaming buddings that. They will all be shocked to learn that word and maybe even will start using it...I wonder if we could use it as a noun?
Making whoopy doesn't appear to mean the same thing any longer either. Then - whoopy meant going out and having a swell time, now, it's a nice way of saying that you're getting it on. Swell is used the same way as it was in the 50s through to Happy Days.
Also, just like now, if you don't know how to dance, you will lose the girl to the evil bastard drug dealer every single time. The prettier the girl and the slimier the bastard drug dealer, the faster it happens. Some things never change. I don't know if should feel consoled that I would have been as big a loser in 1936 as I am now, or if it should bother me that even time travel cannot help a guy like me. Note to self, when time machine is invented, learn to dance before going anywhen. Also, beware the dope evil.
As far as this film goes, the women are better actors than the men, across the board. I know that the evils of cocaine or dope or whatever is the aim of the movie and they try to show that dope is at the root of all the evils of society, but what they show in each and every case is bad economics - poor people trying to get a foot up, or rich people out slumming it and wanting to be "tough". I have a hard time buying that doing cocaine leads directly to committing suicide, with a stop on an unmarried pregnancy along the way. Or that doing head ache powder leads directly to prostitution then to murder. Somehow, while the drug dealing men and drug using men thought of as "hard", they are not held to blame for anything that happens to the women who are using the dope, even though in all the cases in this movie, it's the men pressuring this women to do the dope. Funny how that works.

Test Tube Babies (1948)
When I saw how old this film was, I thought it couldn't possibly mean test tube babies in the context I was thinking of, but then the credits role with a  nice, full screen statement, "Medical and Technical Data approved and supervised by The NATIONAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR FERTILITY INCORPORATED Nt L.I. N.Y." I preserved capitalization and think that L.I. must mean Long Island.
This next line is to the tune of the Brady Bunch theme song.
Here's a story, of George and Kathy, who were living boring little lives.

What can I say about this film? It starts of with a text description of the whole movie and then proceeds to act that description out. Act it out horribly. Horribly acting out the horrible acting of actors acting horribly. And then there's a party at Kathy and George's while George is at the office, and next thing you know there's a cat fight and a topless women. In a 1948 film. I didn't see that coming. And right after this, Kathy and George talk about a divorce, but realize the solution to all of their problems is having a baby. Because that will make George work less. They go to a gynecologist, or as they pronounce it "gee-neh-cologist" and BAM, we're saying Kathy naked. You go 1940s propaganda film! This is also where the sponsorship becomes obvious as they actually discuss Kathy's results and send George to see an Urologist. Of course, we don't see George naked or giving a sample, just a man peering through a microscope.
The next visit is all about artificial insemination. It involves a lecture and a wall chart and some discussion of chromosomes and how the donors are picked. Did I mention that that the doctor is named Dr. Right? Or I guess it could be Write. Whatever. He sounds an awful lot like Rod Serling.
Because it's noticeable for it's absence up to this point, Dr. Right smokes. While the artificial insemination is going on, George pulls one out and smokes it. Humorously, right after the insemination, Dr. Right comes out to tell George it went fine and seems a touch out of breath and sits down on the corner of the desk and has a post (artificial) coital cigarette. Of course the effort works and next thing you know, George is at the hospital chain smoking while Kathy is in labor. The doctor comes out to comfort him and actually sends George away to buy smokes for both of them.
Due to the film being spliced together, I hope because of bad spots, we go right from the above scene to a voiced over speech in a nursery full of babies. From there the next scene is George and Kathy five years later, with three kids and both saying how happy they are, which cuts to a message saying to go see your obstetrician if you want ot get pregnant - I'm only paraphrasing a little bit on that.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

I like this movie in spite of itself. They really mess with the Marvel universe and the X-Men movies timeline to boot, but let me be honest, I will watch anything with a) Wolverine or b) Hugh Jackman, and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is a must see for me.
One of the reasons I'm watching this movie now is that I just watched X-Men: First Class. Since that is the first of the films, I though why not watch all five in timeline order. I also watched the movie because movies are a really good way to escape reality for a little while and I thought that I could really use some Canuck action.
On it's own, this movie is pretty good. But, if you try and fit it into the X-Men movie timeline/universe it has a few problems, and if you compare it to the comics version, there are a whole lot more. But, before I get into the issues I want to say that the cast of this movie is great. Hugh Jackman is Wolverine. Liev Schreiber is an actor I enjoy watching whether it be on the silver screen or playing a cop on CSI, he gets into his roles and has not let me down yet. I also really liked Danny Huston as the villain of the story, Col. Stryker. I'm not sure what I've seen Huston in before but he has a familiar looking face. Will.I.Am, in the first movie I've seen him in, does an excellent job. Ryan Reynolds plays Wade Wilson pretty well, and I'm not sure how the Deadpool of this movie ends up like the comic book Deadpool, but I'd watch the movie with Reynolds that was trying to tell me. And last but not least is Lynn Collins who plays very well opposite of Jackman, plus I think she's a looker and I like looking.
Granted I think Schreiber is great as Victor Creed, he is not Sabretooth, and that totally sucks. Tyler Man plays a great Sabretooth in the X-Men movies (1 through 3) and it's a pity that he wasn't playing Sabretooth. Maybe Man doesn't have the acting chops of Schreiber, I get that, but you have this guy, Victor Creed who is the same height as Wolverine. How do you account for that? I'm supposed to believe that in the next 8 to 10 years that takes place before X-Men 1, that Victor goes feral, has his hair turn blond and grows a foot in height? Here's the deal Mr. Movie-Maker, I would totally buy that if you gave me a reason why. Actually, this might be the only incongruity between X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men 1 through 3. That actually isn't too bad in sheer numbers, but in weight it's kind of a big deal.
Damn, there is one thing that bothers me, and it's not a timeline/character issue. It's right at the end when Stryker uses the adamantium bullets on Wolverine. How do the bullets og adamantium go through adamantium? And at least as important, how does Logan heal the holes? We see him do this and I don't mean the skin closing up, we see the holes in his skull heal up. I understand the need to use some plot device to cause Logan to forget, but a bullet up through the soft palette would really have made me more happy.
The problems with the internal consistency of these movies really comes out when you compare X-Men: First Class (XMFC) with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (XMOW). First, Ororo Munroe - in XMFC she's about 10 in 1962, but in XMOW, she look even younger in the 1980s. Second, Professer X - in XMFC paralyzed in 1962, on XMOW, walking around in 1990s. Third, Emma Frost - adult woman in 1962, young woman/older teen in 1990s. There are probably more things, but these were the big 3 that jumped out at me.
There are many differences between this movie and the comic book, like the fact that Canadian government being behind the Weapon X project is completely gone. Since Wolverine ends having a thing for Heather Hudson (not his mom - that's what they named her in this film) and being part of the Alpha Flight team. I love Alpha Flight - they're my favorite super-hero team. Disney, if you're reading this, if you won't give me an AF movie, at least put them in the next Wolverine movie (I know Wolvie in Japan is already done shooting).

X-Men Origins: Wolverine at IMDb