So…Was I expecting more? I guess I was. After all, two awesome fucking games worth of story built the legend of Max Payne…how hard should it be to take just some of that and slap it on the big screen? Apparently too hard. While there were a few small alterations that I thought were forgivable, this movie was a giant turd sandwich. The worst part to me was it didn’t even bother to accurately follow the story from the first Payne, which could have EASILY been a great movie given the right director/writer combo to put it up. Instead, as usual, some shitstain has to “make the story his own” by changing things around. Either that or they didn’t think that the American movie audience would be able to follow the original plots.

Something else that made me upset, you had the fucking cast to do it! Max, Mona, BB, Lupino, Bravura…the bitch head of Aesir! The movie looked right too! The only thing missing was story story story. Fuck it…it’s not worth anymore of my time.

First thought: Sly is grotesque. He’s already publicly admitted to using steroids and HGH, even recommending that older, living action figures like himself turn to horse meds to make themselves titans. Someone should nudge him and tell him he’s starting to look like Jabba the Hut.

Before (circa Rambo III) & After (now)

C’mon right? How does he not start to wonder if he made the right decision when he has to have his t-shirt’s tailored to have a 44″ collar? When he talks it looks like he’s got a mouth full of peanut butter!

Back to the movie, 3% decent, 97% dogshit. While I’m all about gruesome deaths, this movie was just comical. They had to have used Bryan Brown and Brian Dennehy to do the gore effects, as every single one jumped off the screen as obvious CG. The fucks didn’t even try to blend the CG into the scene to make it look realistic, making any CG look more like cell-shaded art ala Roger Rabbit.

The story was silly, some righteous missionaries try to teach the Burmese the missionary position and end up getting captured, having already been warned by Rambo (who’s still wallowing in Thailand, fishing for the locals) not to bother in Burma. Rambo leaps to action and kills everyone. Yawn.

The 3% good came in when they actually tried to tie into the magic of the first movie. One of the missionistas actually manages to get more than just a moan and a stare from Rambo with some questions, and tries to talk him into going home to AZ, USA, to visit his family finally (do they still think he’s in Nam?). Tacked onto the end, he’s actually done it and returned to America. Wearing the same giddup and carrying the same duffel from when Dennehy started the whole shit off with him in the 80′s. Walking Bruce Bixby-style to his home. Too bad they didn’t expand this 3% to offset the shit that made up the rest of the movie.

So,
Magic John Stone for Rambo:

I really didn’t start watching and buying movies until the end of the 90′s, about the time when the modern-classic age of hong kong cinema was coming to and end. China now had possession of Hong Kong and many famous directors had fled for fear that their craft would be handicapped in some way by the political shift that was taking place. The great films of the 80′s and 90′s had already made their mark on the collective soul of chinese action cinema, and I was seeing it all for the first time.

The Prodigal Son

Out of the movies I’ve seen, “The Prodigal Son” film stood out. It stood out from the thousands of films because of it’s technical merit and because the respect for the chosen technique, featured in the story; Wing Chun.

No…not the band Wang Chun, or whatever…Wing Chun is a close-range Chinese fighting style. It is the style that Bruce Lee had been proficient in prior to creating his own forms. The secret behind the style is that the practitioner can defend and attack at the same time, without wasting energy with wild movement. Whether or not it could stand up to a Brazilian Ju-Jitsu onslaught (see “no”) is not my concern. It is a poetic style and lends itself well to being the featured art of a kung fu film.

Here is a scene from The Prodigal Son, which is, in my opinion, the finest technical fight scene I’ve ever seen in a film:

The fight scene is masterful in adhering to the rules of Wing Chun and not only is it fast, but it’s technically flawless. Very cool. That’s one that benefits from a slow-motion viewing or two.

Along with the riveting action sequences and technical accuracy there’s a great story and some comedy too. As with most Hong Kong action cinema you get a little of everything. One second someone’s wife could be getting raped, and the next there’ll be a fart joke. Couple this with the fact that the bad guy always gets killed/defeated and you now have the principle reasons why I love kung fu movies.

With the tone of recent martial arts action movies out of China turning, primarily, to tragic themes (Curse of the Golden Flower, Hero, Fearless, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, to name a few), I miss the old care-free days of “Cantonese comedy”-infused films.

Just for fun, here’s the final fight scene (complete with shitty dubbing and ass-hair-burning musical score)(watch for the headbutt, awesome!):

Fucking Sweet

The actor in the first fight scene on the bridges, who is practicing Wing Chun, is Lam Ching Ying. Who died in 1997 from liver cancer. So he was long dead by the time I even saw this movie. Sucks that he’s not around to school the next generation of action stars.

Here’s a great page detailing the life and death of a great kung fu action star.

Here are some bonus clips of Lam Ching Ying in action (awsome):
Spook Encounters 2
Magnificent Butcher
Wheelchair Beatdown

In an effort to saturate the Grounds with movie reviews, I’ve been combing the *ahem* libraries for some golden oldies. This time around, it’s George Romero’s Creepshow. I remember this movie from when I was a wee lad, and that it both intrigued me enough to watch it over and over again and that it scared the shit outta me. I’ll slice this review up to follow the serial nature of the movie, so follow along…minor spoilers ahead

Father’s Day
Not as creepy now as it once was. A group of smarmy republicans assemble every Father’s Day to honor their dead grandfather, who was rumored to have been killed by their mother with a marble ashtray because all the fucker did was bang on his chair with a heavy cane screaming and calling her Bitch all the time, complaining that they’re all just after his cash. If you ask me the fucker got what he deserved… In the end, it’s not as scary as it used to be. Satisfying though.

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill
Stephen King (who wrote the stories) stars as a hillbilly’s hillbilly that finds a meteor on his land. Everything the meteor touches (or touches it in the case of King) begins to quickly overgrow with some eerie-ass grass…and not the smoking kind. While he begins to turn into a Chia Pet, he dreams about selling the meteor off to a local college to pay off his debts. More quirky than scary.

Something to Tide You Over
An old school tour de force, starring Leslie Neilsen and Ted Danson. Ted’s sleeping with Leslie’s wife, and Leslie wants revenge. Again, I can’t blame him. He’s got a strange CCTV fetish and a love for the tide. Probably my second favorite of the five serials.

The Crate
A couple of buddy professors secretly loath the ultra-controlling drunkass whore wife that one of them was unlucky enough to marry…to the point where the dumbass married to her daydreams about killing her. One day, a janitor at the college they teach at finds a crate hidden under a stairwell marked “Arctic Expedition, 1854″, all hell literally breaks loose. My favorite of the five stories.

They’re Creeping Up On You
EG Marshall is a particularly annoying SuperRepublican, living alone in a spartan apartment built to seal out pollution, germs and bugs. He obsesses about cleanliness while screaming at people on the phone, ordering them around and buying up companies. He gets his…and this story was the hardest for me to watch when I was young. An telltale quote, said by a woman’s voice on the phone to EG, “I hope you get cancer in the worst place!”

The best part of the movie is the way Romero mixed in the serial comic content with the live action content, tying the stories together with a short story about a kid killing his shitty dad. Each of the stories use comic-cell style overlays and crazy lighting throughout to link the comics to the live action…good stuff. Also you’ll notice that in each story, the people that meet their end have it coming, while the protagonists are usually people you also loathe…which in a way makes the world the stories are based in a little easier to believe, i.e. everyone’s human.

Arousal Factor – Magic John Stone for Creepshow – Snapped to Attention

I Think I Love My Wife

Having nothing to watch last night I found myself flipping through HBO’s OnDemand offerings when I came across the recent Chris Rock movie “I Think I Love My Wife“. Rock, who wrote, directed, and produced the film plays a bored married man who spends his days fantasizing about sex with other woman and his nights being denied sex by his wife. This all changes however with the arrival of Nikki (played by Kerry Washington), the sassy, super-sexy, ex-girlfriend of one of Rock’s old college buddies.

The Good:

• Kerry Washington is HAWT. Need more proof? Watch She Hate Me.
• There are certain scenes in the movie where Rock literally shifts into stand-up mode and begins delivering jokes as if he were on stage at the Apollo. These moments are actually quite funny.

The Bad:

• The Movie as a whole. The acting is nothing to write home about, the plot is forced and awkward, and the characters have ZERO chemistry.

The Ugly:

• Rocks acting is as bad as it ever was. At this point I think it’s safe to say the man simply doesn’t belong in front of the camera unless he’s performing stand-up.

The Verdict

Don’t rent, don’t buy. Keep your distance.

Arousal Scale – Redscape for “I Think I Love My Wife” – Snapped Clean Off

The film is an adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name and the 3rd movie based in King’s source material that Darabont has directed. Perhaps you’ve heard of the other two: The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. As in his previous two endeavors, Darabont does not disappoint here.

The basics of the plot are simple. In the wake of a particularly violent storm a mysterious mist appears and engulfs a small New England community. Certain residents find themselves trapped in a supermarket due to “something” in the mist which kills anyone who travels more than a few feet outside the store. Inside the store we are introduced to what appears to be the normal hodge-podge of stereotypical characters that frequently inhabit movies of the horror genre. However while some of these characters do indeed behave in the typical wooden and predictable manner you would expect, the ones that matter actually manage to bring a surprising degree of complexity and humanity to the roles.

Speaking of roles I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen Thomas Jane better! I think I can honestly say his performance here eclipsed those he turned in for Deep Blue Sea, The Punisher, and even 61*. His character, David Drayton, is the closest thing to a hero in the film however Jane plays it low key and subtle and through this we see that this is a just man trying to survive. In fact at times some of the choices and decisions he makes are startlingly selfish and go directly against what a “hero” in such a film would do.

As for the monsters themselves they are where the build up comes in to play. At first we see a tentacle here or hear a loud bang or rattle there. Soon we see all manner of creatures out in the fringes of the mist and there is a particular scene I would advise anyone with a fear of spiders to cover their eyes during.

If the movie has a downside it’s the blatant usage of some of the characters as nothing more than a plot device. Andre Braugher’s role as, Brent Norton, the out of town, New York, asshole lawyer is a perfect example. It’s a shame too because I normally like Braugher. Not this time around however.

Overall I found the film to be enjoyable and riveting. Without giving anything away I will warn you, however, that the ending of this movie is pretty hardcore. Not so much from a blood and guts standpoint but more from a psychological perspective. Still I encourage everyone to check it out. Definitely rent worthy and if you’re a horror movie buff it’s a buy for sure!

Arousal Scale – Redscape for “The Mist” – Stone Cold Rock Hard

Another new review topic, a brainfart of our man Redscape called “Why you keep bringin’ up old shit?”. We intend to use this category to review old movies, games, music, etc. And my old I mean ‘relatively accepted as in the past’. Spoilers are mute because we’re going to assume that you’ve either seen, read, played, heard, etc…what we’re talking about.

Blade Runner – The Final Cut

So I’ve finally made it COMPLETELY through Blade Runner without falling asleep. My previous attempts numbered (3), each time just making it past the point where Edward James Almost makes his strangely asian-speaking debut. And while this is “Why you keep bringin’ up old shit?”, I am reviewing Ridley Scott’s “Final Cut” of the movie, just because if I’m gonna watch the damned thing might as well be the ulti-version.

I gotta say, it’s great to see a young and healthy Harrison Ford in a movie. One of the reasons that I’m holding my enthusiasm for Indy IV is because of his age. It was also good to see a good old classic 80′s representation of the future, just gives you that warm and fuzzy feeling inside. This movie starts out like it’s going to go 2001 style, extremely slow shots with Space-Mountain music that lull you to sleep…and then some asshole shoots a repub through a wall in one of the better over-the-top handgun-blasts I can remember. The rest of the movie ebbs and flows from slow 80′s-scifi pace to action movie pace, never quite slowing enough to lose you but never going over the top.

This vision of the future has been played before, although when it was new it might have been original. LA’s a huge city with enormous skyscrapers and monolithic structures built over the husk of the old city. There are tons of asian influences, no doubt when we were sure Japan would buy up the country. It’s dreary, dirty looking and full of smog and rain. Deckard’s (Harrison Ford) apartment looks like a cabin on a spaceship and is on the 97th floor of somekind of superbuilding. Everyone seems grimy, sweaty and tired of life. A great outlook.

In any event, I’m not gonna run down the whole jist of the story. Suffice it to say there’s some ‘Replicants’ (very-human looking androids) running around looking for someone to tell them how to live longer than four years, and Deckard’s job is to race after them and shoot them with his burpgun all the while giving that trademark Harrison Ford what’s-going-on look. I’m sure there’s a deeper meaning here, but I just watched the movie and haven’t had decades to argue it with my buds. The rest of the cast is pretty good, nobody was too shitty. Meh.

All in all, not a bad movie. I’m glad to have finally seen it, but I don’t think I’ll watch it again, at least not for a long time.

Arousal Scale – Magic John Stone for Blade Runner – A Magic John Bone

Eraserhead

Jesus tapdancing christ…fuck my brain! Half of me wonders if David Lynch made this movie so ridiculously insane on purpose simply to make people try and figure out what it all means, and part of me thinks that maybe he had a method to the madness…though I hope not. If he did then he’s a crazy ass bastard, to be sure. In keeping with the theme of Shotgun Theater, I’m not going to reveal any spoilers…even though I doubt most people will be able to make it through this movie. I would warn you, however, that this movie is straight-up disturbing as hell. I’d try not to watch it around anyone else for fear that they’d think you’re a goddamn lunatic freakshow for suggesting they watch it. And while keeping any spoiler material close to the vest, I’m going to also say that this movie is completely worthless. Nothing makes any sense and if you’re seeing some kind of imagery or can draw any parallels to ANYTHING then you’re either high as Chong or you’re some goth goof-off that wants this movie to mean something so you can tell people about it like it’s a badge of honor. All you’ll do is prove your mental retardation.

Arousal Scale – Magic John Stone for Eraserhead: Imploded like Michael Biehn

Awake

After seeing Redscape’s review, I decided to give this movie its day in court…not a bad move. I’ve come to except and overlook Hayden Christenson’s driftwood-school of acting…it truly seems like he’s trying but in the end all you get is some pouting stares, which when coupled with his caterpiller-like eyebrows make him look like a two year-old trying to force out his first throne-dump. Sad really. Aside from that nonsense, and in spite of the acting, the movie was at the very least held my interest throughout. The most believable performance was turned in by Lena Olin, who played Hayden’s mum…Jessica Alba should probably just be bronzed in the nude and placed in a public square for youngin’s to ogle. I’m a Terrance Howard fan, but he wasn’t remarkable at all in this flick either. In fact, the only thing that made this movie watchable was the story…so if you’re down for a decent story and can live through 80 minutes of not-the-worst, but not great acting then I second Redscape’s recommendation for renting Awake.

Arousal Scale – Magic John Stone for Awake: Flacid

There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Andersons “There Will Be Blood” is at its heart a character study. And oh what a character it gives us in Daniel Day Lewis’s portrayal of Daniel Plainview, a pioneering oil driller and eventual tycoon. Anyone familiar with Lewis’s work behind the camera knows that his performances instantly command respect. His Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York still gives me shivers when I watch it. To say his performance this time around was astonishing would be downplaying it. I honestly can’t think of any other actor in today’s Hollywood that could have pulled it off. After seeing the film I can honestly say I’m in full support of his recent Oscar win.
One of the things I liked most about the movie was how it effectively captured the look and feel of the time. Rarely have I found myself so drawn in and transfixed by the settings of a film. The bulk of the action takes place in the American southwest during the early 20th century and Anderson effectively uses the quiet and desolate nature of the land to accentuate and lend power to the characters performances. The brutal nature and hardships of the mining and drilling are also captured and conveyed very well.
While we’re on the subject of Anderson it should be said his directing here is superb. He moves the film at a slow pace which allows the viewer to become fully engrossed in the richness and complexities of the characters. The first few minutes of the movie, during which there is no dialogue just action underscored by tense chords of music, are a perfect example of how well Anderson is in control of his craft.
Kudos also to the supporting cast, especially relative newcomer Paul Dano who turns in a particularly noteworthy performance as a corrupt and attention seeking preacher.
Overall I give the film top marks in nearly every category. A definite must see as well as must have for anyone’s collection.
Arousal Scale – Redscape for There Will Be Blood: Platinum Dipped and Diamond Tipped

Awake

I have to say I didn’t like Awake at first and it wasn’t until about half an hour into the film that I really began to get into it. Looking back on it now I realize I was trying to make the movie, in my mind, into something it is not. I was looking for the film to be fairly black and white in it’s portrayal of events and wasn’t expecting the moral complexities it presented me with instead. With that said, let me also state if metaphysics isn’t you particular cup of tea it may be best if you stay away from this one.
On the surface the film is about a young man who has inherited both his late fathers vast wealth and responsibility. The rub is he’s got a bum ticker that could go at any moment. Add to this a sexy fiancé, a disapproving and controlling mother, and a heart surgeon who’s up to his elbows in malpractice suits and you have the makings of a fairly cleaver thriller. On a deeper level the movie deals with issues of betrayal, morality, and second chances.
The twist in the plot is provided by a phenomenon known as Anesthesia Awareness. As you can probably guess the net result of this experience is being fully conscience, yet paralyzed during surgery. In this case heart transplant surgery. Not a fun time. The scenes involving the surgery were particularly terrifying. The rest of the movie involves a literal out of body experience as our protagonist races around the hospital and city trying to piece together clues and uncover an apparent plot against his life.
Now a few words on acting. Hayden Christensen, a.k.a. “Mannequin Skywalker”, turns in a fairly well performance, but he’s still plagued by a “woodenness” in his delivery at times. I still think he has what it takes to become a high caliber actor; I just think his technique needs some refining. Jessica Alba character was functional at best and it honestly felt like she phoned it in. Terrence Howard I’m convinced at this point could effortlessly play any role.
The real surprise for me however was how tender and touching the film turned out to be. It was almost as if midway through it transformed into a totally different movie.
Bottom line: Rent this movie or catch it on cable, not worth buying.
Arousal Scale – Redscape for Awake: Steamed Asparagus