Sunday 31 January 2010

Brokeback Mountain

Yes I watched it.

And oddly enough it hasn't made me gay.

It did make me bored however.

Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal play two wholly unlikeable characters who become ranch hands up a mountain and then decide to get their gay on. Probably out of boredom.

If it weren't for all the scenes of Jake Giuliani going up and down Heath Ledger's mountain then this would very much be a Made For TV movie, what with the paper thin plot, grating soundtrack, and uninteresting camera work.

Let me sum up the motivations of each character for you:

Heath Ledger plays a self obsessed prick who is broke, gets a job as a ranch hand, shags a bloke to give him something to do (seriously, they go from 'God I'm bored' to 'Hey want to try something?' without any real 'whats your sign?' getting to know one another moments), then Heath gets married, neglects his wife and kid, and keeps running out for man love.

Jake Jellybelly plays a guy who basically wants to have his cock and eat it. He signs on as a ranch hand, shows his bum to Heath Ledger and Heath falls or something, then he goes out gets married to a well-to-do lady because he likes the idea of having money, and keeps running out for man love.

Tensions run high because Jake TootiFrooty is secretly cheating on Heath, and Heath suspects that someone else has been dipping his sausage in the brown sauce. It's really dragged out yet the only things that happen are that Heath continues to neglect his wife and Jake Jamjar continues to be a douche.

At last finally Jake Juxtaposition gets beaten to death by intolerant cowboys who don't like them hoe-moe-sexuals gaying up their rodeos, or something along those lines. I was thrilled because with the death of one of the major characters this late on meant only one thing, this movie was nearly over.

And still it was dragged out.

And then it ended.

I'm told that Brokeback Mountain isn't a 'gay' movie, but a movie about gays for straight people. Frankly I wouldn't recommend it for either, it's just dull.

Rating: E

Wednesday 20 January 2010

Gamer

Not completely retarded, plus Dexter was quite fun in it.

Also, Peter Petrelli playing a character called Rick Rape just seemed so right.

The 'game' world somehow has this indescribable feel of a game world, and the movement of the characters under gamer control is an accurate representation of in-game avatars.

Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges makes his second appearance in something involving a game, and not only does it make sense this time but you actually don't feel like he is just the token black guy. I mean he is, but it doesn't feel like it. Nah I'm kidding, one of the main antagonists is this really angry psycho dude who happens to be more black than Ludacris, and for the purposes of this movie, more badass.

I can't insult the acting... I would like to but at the end of the day I enjoyed the performances delivered.

Instead I'll insult the premise of the movie.

Once upon a time, roughly two years ago, it was leaked that James Cameron was working on a movie that involved humans taking control of the bodies of mindless drones breed for such a purpose. Somebody else in Hollywoodland said "Hey, that's a good idea, there are probably a few ways we can cash in on that. I wonder what it's like to have an original idea? Ah well, time for more cocaine."

So a quick fix action movie starring zero big names slips out just in time to beat Avatar to the box office.

Apart from that it's dead on. There's the usual Bill Gates bashing that you expect from every pseudo-real world computer movie because everyone on the planet wishes that they could make the kind of money Bill Gates made out of Microsoft (and anyone who claims otherwise is nothing but a liar) but probably never will because there are only a limited number of generation defining inventions that can exist at one time.

Did I say Dexter was fun? Because he really was.

Gerard Butler wasn't bad either... at least he didn't have a guitar this time.

One thing that did give it a hairline fracture compared to real world gaming, at no point did any of the main characters pause over a corpse and repeatedly crouch over them...

Rating: C

(Seriously, the guy controlling Gerard Butler is supposed to be 17, I don't believe for a second that he never tried to tea-bag any of his victims)

Tuesday 12 January 2010

Taking of Pelham 123 (The)

Crappy camera work, lots of zooming and fast moving to really show how unoriginal the director is (I'm so uninspired by this POS that I couldn't be arsed to look him up), and lots of sudden pauses to show the time.

Denzel does his best but is let down by the fact that his character is the only person in the entire movie who gets any kind of character development.

And why did John Travolta say 'motherfucker' so often?

I'll write more later, coffee time.

Rating: E

Avatar

I heard it said shortly after the world premier that the critics were calling this James Cameron's STAR WARS, and by fuck they were right. They've merchandised the shit out of this movie before the first reels even cooled.

"Get yourself a Casio Watch because the guy in Avatar doesn't wear one because it's all holograms and shit in the future but you can bet your ass if he wore a watch it would be this one."

Then there's the toys, comics, clothing, badges, posters, toilet roll, kitchen sink, vibrator, Na'vi blow-up doll and CD soundtrack. Not to mention a game that sounded so generic that I actually yawned reading the back of the box before setting it down and biding my time for the glorified text adventure that is Mass Effect 2.

The forums and blogs are alive with the mediocrity that is fanfiction, and Avatar has not been spared this blight.

Yep, just like Star Wars.

That being said the movie is actually good.

The world of Pandora is absolutely beautiful, even the things that want to kill and maim the hero have a bizarre beauty to them. It's not so beautiful that I want to kill myself because I can't go there unlike some net-nerds to have professed this (I wish I was fucking kidding).

It's your typical story of an advanced race walking in and stomping all over the tree-hugging locals and stealing their resources. If you are having trouble getting to grips with the story try swapping out the name "human" with "America" and "Na'vi" with "oil rich nation". Or "human" with "Western Europe" and "Na'vi" with "Africa circa 1800". You get the idea.

Humans are portrayed as the bad guys of the story, which is an easy sell because there is no one human beings hate more than other humans. Of course not all are bad and this gets us our main protagonists otherwise we'd lose interest 10 minutes in because no one could empathize with a big, blue, naked, CGI guy.

The opening scenes with the humans and the arrival on Pandora made me happy because it was very beautifully realized and I thought 'this is just how a Planetside movie would have looked'... which is slightly sad on my part.

James Cameron's style is very evident in the design of the craft and technologies and I had a chuckle to myself when I realized how close the design of the big green flying death platform resembled a UD-4L dropship (that's from his other Star Wars, Aliens). And I liked it.

I'm glad that after getting Sigourney Weaver for the movie James Cameron chose not to reuse any of his usual stalwarts for the cast for fear that people would think it was another Aliens. As much as I like Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton I do feel the essence of familiarity would have harmed Avatar somewhat, and Sam Worthington did pretty good in the end.

The score is beautiful and deep, and when the action happens the whole thing meshes together wonderfully. There are certain scenes that will really move the emotions, from one of 'wow, that is awesome', to another of 'oh wow, I hate my species right now'.

You get slapped in the face with how the movie is going to end about maybe 30 minutes before it does and I did not appreciate that because it really took the edge off some of the action.

Overall though I'm going to be very favorable to Avatar because 1) it is a good movie; and 2) I want James Cameron to direct a script I'm writing (it could happen). Mostly it's option 1 though.

It's easy to see how Avatar not only grossed over $1 Billion at the Box Office but did so in a world record of 17 days.

Rating: A