Chloe

Yeah.

Chloe was released in theatres on 3/26/10 and on DVD and Blu-ray on 7/13/10.

Chloe was full of great performances, but you'll definitely be able to predict excactly what happens throughout. No surprises here except for the soft core porn scene with Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried. Still, a well made, well acted movie.

The Switch

No.

The Switch was sort of a disappointment for me. Hindsight being 20/20, I sort of regret getting my hopes up so high for this romantic comedy, but the premise seemed so unique that I thought it might actually be somewhat original.

Jennifer Aniston plays the same character she always plays, which is essentially a variation on Rachel from Friends. Bateman isn't nearly as witty as he usually is because his character is so damned depressed throughout the whole movie and the rest of the cast is just as "whatever" as the the leads.

The Switch isn't unwatchable, it's just a pretty big let down. It falls into the category of movies with original concepts that just aren't executed well; a category that actually angers me. Check this one out on cable, it's not worth the cost of a ticket or a rental.

Piranha 3D

Yes...

... and by yes, I mean, "Shit, yeah!!!"

Piranha 3D is a remake of the 1978 cult classic that, based on the synopsis I read, is nothing like the "remake" at all. That's irrelevant though, because this new version is (I'm sure) just as silly, campy, gorey, and nude-y as it's predecessor.

The effects are terrible, the acting is over-the-top and the story is, obviously, ridiculous. However, Piranha 3D succeeds where, say, Snakes on a Plane failed because it never tries to take itself seriously. The producers knew what kind of movie they were trying to make and hired people who "got it".

You should run out and catch Piranha in 3D if you still can... it's fun.

Vampires Suck

No.

FYI, there are spoilers in this review because I don't fuckin' care if you want to be surprised... you shouldn't see it anyway. Why do these movies have to exist? I feel like these parody's are more of a detriment to youth culture than any well made R-rated film regardless of the content.

There is a subtlety to comedy that's lost on a lot of people. I'm not trying to sound snobbish or condescending, but obvious jokes are not funny. They are even less funny when you explain them. There is one scene in Vampires Suck when the werewolf character takes his shirt off for (seemingly) no reason. The girl character asks why he took his shirt off and he says that he's required to for every 10 minutes of screen time as per his contract... Then he holds up a copy of his contract. They could have not said anything after he took his shirt off mid sentence and we still would have gotten the joke... they really didn't need to explain it twice.

There are a few glimmers of comedy (most of which are, again, explained to the apparently dumb as a board audience). I chuckled when the girl character accidentally kills Buffy the Vampire Slayer who was there to save her from the bad vampires. But then Buffy says, in the Buffyest way possible, something like "ech, I was, like, totally here to save you..." before she drops dead. As if we didn't already get the reference.

(This is where I may sound a little snobbish...) Maybe it's because I'm smart that movies like this insult me, (and now condescending...) but if this is the kind of entertainment that makes you laugh, you should totally go see Vampires Suck.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Yes.

I really liked Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The plot is simple (but at least there is one), the humor is smart and goofy at the same time, and the performances are irrelevant.

Let's just get it out in the open so that it never has to be mentioned again... Michael Cera will never play a different character. Doesn't that feel good? Now, no one will ever have to be upset or surprised that he keeps playing the same character in every movie. I know it may seem hypocritical since I often complain about the likes of Nicholas Cage, Ben Stiller and Jack Black who also have made a career of playing the same role in whatever situations the new film they're in calls for. I guess what it ultimately boils down to is, "Do you like the character?" When it comes to Michael Cera, the answer for me is, "Yes... for now."

The movie as a whole, however, is just frenetic fun. It's visually exciting, aurally engrossing and intellectually numbing. It's tailor-made for people suffering from attention deficit disorder in that there are no (or very few) scene transitions. A characters will be in one scene talking with one person and once the point of the conversations is made clear to the viewer, the background behind the character will change mid-sentence and the same character will be in an entirely different location talking to different characters who have no idea what he's talking about.

While it may sound overwhelming, it's not and if you want to submerse yourself in crazy for a couple of hours I strongly recommend Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

The Expendables

Fuck no.

What a piece of garbage (and I mean that in the worst possible way). This throwback to 80's action films is so poorly conceived, written, and directed that I'm pissed I even thought it might be entertaining. The Expendables is a real disappointment.

Go ahead, ask me what it's about. I have no fuckin clue. Not because it's confusing or even mildly complicated, but because they never say what it's about. THERE IS NO PLOT. Rambo, Cobra, Commando... simple as they were, they all had a story. This movie was literally about a bunch of guys who get hired to kill a lot of people. No indication of who they work for, why they do what they do, who pays them... why the people who hire them want them to do what they hire them to do or what the end result of the job is and what kind of political ramifications it'll have.

Every scene with Randy Couture and Terry Crews should have been deleted. Not one thing that they say or do advances the nonexistent plot.

The scene that's supposed to set up some kind of story, the one in the church with Stallone, Willis and Schwarzenegger, was so poorly written and acted that it was unintentionally hysterically funny and I was uncontrollably laughing out-loud. They were trying to have this Heat moment (Pacino and DeNiro on screen together for the first time) and instead, they filled it with terrible dialogue that specifically designed to take shots at either the actors in real life or the characters they played in other movies, and the dialogue was separated by extraordinarily uncomfortable pauses.

I took a quick nap whenever Mickey Rourke showed up because, between his 10 minute crybaby monologues about the girl who got away and Jason Statham's moping about his girlfriend cheating on him, I thought I was watching the fuckin Devine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

Dolph Lundgren isn't a good enough actor to pull off a flip-flop-flip-flop-flip of that magnitude convincingly, not that the writers actually gave him any motivation to jump back and forth between good and bad... he just did. And finally, Jet Li was probably supposed to have a storyline and Stallone just got tired of writing. Li kept talking about how he needs more money, lies about why, admits to lying about why but insists that he needs more money and... that's it... they never revisit it.

If they had made this an origin story instead of throwing us right into the middle of their careers, this could have been the start of a fun franchise. The Expendables is full of cursing, tattoos, motorcycles, gunfire and explosions, but it's completely devoid of talent. You decide how you want to spend your money.

The Other Guys

No.

I can't, for the life of me, understand why this is getting better reviews than Dinner for Schmucks. The Other Guys relies entirely on the comedy stylings of Will Ferrell so if you like a Will Ferrell movie, you'll love The Other Guys.

Sam Jackson and The Rock are the best part of this and they're only in the first 10 minutes. After that, it's all downhill. Ferrell's overly complicated rants tend to annoy the shit out of me rather than tickle my funny bone. I know the director just lets him do the same scene over and over again, a little differently each time, and then picks the one he thinks is funniest. I truly think Ferrell is at his best when he sticks to the script. Mark Wahlberg proves, once again, that his Oscar nomination was a fluke, and while Michael Keaton was very funny, the script did him a disservice by beating a dead horse, specifically the TLC gag.

As in most comedies, I laughed here and there, but not enough to recommend The Other Guys.