The Roommate

No.

So, I learned a lesson last month (that is to say February as I write this review on March 7th). I seem to have forgotten everything I hated about The Roommate. The lesson is that I really should, at a minimum, jot down some notes so that I can form them into a worthy review in a more timely manner.

Suffice it to say, The Roommate was terrible you you should not see it.

Repo Men

No.

Repo Men is just an excuse to release a blood splattered movie in theatres.

There are so many different approaches they could have taken with the subject matter to make the film relevant in today's society. The new Health Care craze and the nation's current economic crisis could have both been analyzed through the clever concept for this movie. Neither were.

Even the most basic concept or morality is only briefly explored with Remy's (Jude Law) wife's decision to leave him if he didn't transfer to the sales team and get out of the repossession department. Even that's a pretty weak gesture since that implies that if she turns a blind eye, everything is OK. I was really hoping that the ethics of the company that repossesses your organs if you can't pay back your loan would play a role in the plot of the movie. It didn't.

Having watched this movie free of charge, it's difficult for me to say that I didn't at least enjoy watching it play out. I was hoping for a whole lot more and if I had payed to see it, I would have been furious.

The Box

Yes.

Have you ever sat through a whole movie and thought, "What the hell did I just watch?" I can tell you that I've seen all of writer/director Richard Kelly's films over the past 10 years and I've had a similar reaction to all three.

I watched Donnie Darko when it first came out on DVD and when it ended I stared at the television for the entire length of the end credits, the menu came back up, I said "What?" out loud, and then pressed play again and sat through the whole movie again... it didn't really help me to understand it at all, but I still love that movie.

Southland Tales? Well I didn't really watch the whole thing; so not so much with the love, but I can say that I really have no idea what it's about or what happened during the parts that I saw.

I was kind of pumped for The Box because the trailer made it look significantly more comprehensible than Kelly's last two films. It wasn't. It turned into something completely different from what I had expected, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just that if you asked me to explain it, I swear I wouldn't be able to. Something about lightening and missing toes, water squares and libraries, of course there's a box and there's also a motel full of employees... there might have been aliens involved, I don't know.

I want to see it again so I can maybe understand it better, in the meantime you're on your own so watch carefully if you decide to go.

A Perfect Getaway

No!

I'll write more soon, but it was imperative that I put something on here so that you don't go see this crap... stay away from A Perfect Getaway at all costs.

More to come...

So, I really didn't want to revisit A Perfect Getaway long enough to complete this review, but I'm going to force myself through it with a short list of assumptions followed by a short list of facts.

- This was directed by a first time director.
- Everyone involved in making A Perfect Getaway thinks that the general public is, on average, dumber than a post.
- Steve Zahn and Milla Jovavich are hard up for cash.

- Milla Jovavich is one of the worst actresses on the planet; lacking both talent and personality.
- The screenwriter has absolutely no respect for the art of filmmaking.
- The director of A Perfect Getaway will never win an award, ever, save for a Razzie or two.
- A Perfect Getaway is the worst movie of the year.

Angels & Demons

No.

I wrote no... then I thought about it and I wrote Yes... then I thought about it some more and I decided on No.

I guess it really boils down to whether or not you like these specialized scavenger hunts. National Treasure is Indiana Jones for American history and The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons is Indiana Jones for religion. I have a serious problem with a movie that has a character giving what should be an hour long lecture to another character as they're driving at 80 miles an hour through crowded streets in order to educate the audience. If it happened once, I might have overlooked it... it was the entire movie. I also have concerns about a Harvard symbology professor that can't translate Latin or Italian. I take issue with an evil plot that's entirely reliant on events and decisions that are completely out of the masterminds hands.

After reading what I wrote above, I can't believe I was so hesitant to say "No, you should absolutely NOT see Angels & Demons." I mean it was light years better than The Da Vinci Code in that it was a much more fast paced adventure.

I guess your beliefs will play a strong role in whether or not you care about the final outcome. At some point in the movie someone says that "the modern world is threatening the ancient traditions" of the Catholic church, I, however, believe that the opposite is true. The fact that there are otherwise rational people making irrational and irresponsible decisions in order to uphold ancient traditions is absolutely mind blowing.

Angels & Demons id a fast-paced thriller with puzzles that are impossible for the audience to solve unless you are, apparently, a Harvard symbology teacher. If that interests you then by all means...

Transsiberian

Nah.

Transsiberian was released in theatres on 7/18/08 and on DVD and Blu-ray on 11/4/08.

The truth is it takes way too long for the plot to develop. I was really bored for the first 45-60 minutes of Transsiberian. The worst part is how predictable it is. Now I recognize the fact that I've seen 114 new movies this year alone; me complaining about predictability in movies is sort of asinine. If you aren't going to try for something original then you're movie doesn't need to be 2 hours long.

It's just another instance when if the main character would have just told the truth to begin with there might not have been a movie. Transsiberian was kind of a waste of time.

88 Minutes

No.

88 Minutes was released in theatres on 4/18/08 and on DVD and Blu-ray on 9/16/08.

Terrible. 88 Minutes is the worst acted, written and most poorly directed and edited movie of the year. I honestly don't even know where to start.

They've got Al Pacino running around, diving out of the way of motorcycles and firetrucks. People get shot, hanged and gutted, a building caught on fire and a car explodes and Pacino's student's reaction is an exasperated "ugh, what next?!?" Actually... watch it to see how bad it is. It's hysterically shitty.

Body of Lies

Another rental... yes, you should see it, but no, not in theatres.

I got the same feeling from this as I got from The Kingdom. Actually they were both released at the beginning of October about a year apart... it's probably a coincidence. Body of Lies was better written with more believable acting and much more believable casting.

I really like the idea of setting up a fake terrorist organization so that the leaders of a real terrorist organization will attempt to contact the fake one... thus revealing themselves. I think it's a clever plot for a movie. I'm not 100% sure it would work in real life. Who knows? Maybe they've already tried it.

I'm starting to respect Leonardo DiCaprio. I didn't think I'd ever be able to after Titanic, but between Body of Lies, Blood Diamond, and mostly The Departed, I'm closer to calling myself a fan than I ever imagined I would be. I still don't like Russell Crowe. I feel like everything that he does is an attempt for another Oscar.

I enjoyed Body of Lies except for the gratuitous torture scenes. I feel like Ridley Scott kept the camera on the crushed and severed digits for too long just to add shock value. He just kept showing them. Other than that, it was a little bit The Kingdom with a touch of Syriana. If you're interested in "war on terror" movies, then see it. Everyone else can wait until it's on DVD.

Vantage Point

No.

Sigourney Weaver plays a producer for "GNN" a 24-hour news channel covering a global war on terror summit. If the name of the network she works for isn't enough to steer you away, what happens in the first 10 minutes should be. While covering the summit in Spain, Weaver and her crew spot a familiar face working in the secret service. "Why didn't we know about this?!? Is anyone else reporting this story?!?" She then urgently orders her subordinate to "pull the archives." When the archives have been "pulled", she insists on seeing them played on screen 2.

The archives in question happen to be footage of Dennis Quaid's character thwarting an assassination of the president by diving between him and the assailant, taking the bullet. The man who pulled the archive then asks if they are going to run it as part of the story that they are currently covering. Weaver shoots him down as if it were the most irresponsible thing in the world, "No, that's in the past. That's not our story. The summit is our story" Well then, and please excuse my language, WHY THE FUCK DID SHE HAVE HIM PULL THE GODDAMN ARCHIVES AT ALL?!?!?!?!? To give us, the viewer, back story? No, because 10 minutes after that, we see Dennis Quaid's character having a reflective moment of the same exact event (which we see, again, through flashback). The actual reason she plays the archive on her screen is so that when Quaid bursts into the GNN trailer to review footage of the events that make up the plot, he sees an image of himself wincing in pain after he saved the president's life years ago. Even still, I don't know why that needed to happen. Other than to show us that he notices the paused image on the screen, Quaids character doesn't miss a beat, he barely acknowledges it.

Why do I bring this up? It's really just an example of how pointless this movie is. The 90 minute runtime needs to be filled with unnecessary fluff stories like the frustrated journalist fed up with being censored, the unwilling accomplice who is only helping the terrorists in order to rescue his brother who is being held hostage. And let's not forget Forrest Whitaker, who is on vacation alone because his marriage is failing. I DON'T CARE. He's allowed to be on vacation by himself, the movie doesn't need to make excuses for him. His personal life has nothing to do with the plot of the film or his motivation for getting involved with whats happening.

All but one of the twists are revealed in the trailer for the movie. I won't say what it is, but not only was I not surprised, I really didn't care. Something that is never revealed is what the terrorists plan actually is. The leader of the terrorists insists that the U.S. President not be killed, but never explains why.

The gimmick of showing the events from eight different points of view in order to give us different clues as to what's going on, would have been a clever one if they had actually given us any clues at all. Instead they show us one persons vantage point right up until just before they reveal the whole shebang. Then they very dramatically slow everything down, stop, and then rewind the events back to the beginning of the movie and start showing someone else's vantage point. They did, however, leave out one crucial POV. They neglected to show the events from the vantage point of the audience who were all having flashbacks to that crucial point in their lives when they decided to go see this redundant dreck.