Battleship… the movie
Look, I know. I know, OK?
I knew before we rented it that this was going to be totally unmitigated crap. And it was, so there were no surprises. Right?
Actually, I was a bit surprised at just how absolutely atrociously awful it is. I can watch and enjoy the odd bit of unmitigated crap, as long as the explosions and chases are entertaining enough. But here… well. The characters are laughable, you could drive a semi-trailer sideways through the plot holes… the plot for Battleship almost makes Transformers 3 look like it HAS a plot (although I did not want to scrub my brain after watching this, which I did after watching Transformers 3. Maybe because I watched B in two sittings, and not in a theatre having paid quite a lot of money). And the science… zomg the science. Or rather, lack thereof. Friends, this movie shows people trying to communicate with another planet by using a radio telescope to fire a coherent laser beam at it.
I just. I can’t. There are no words.
This review is, actually, superfluous. Everything you need to know about the movie can be found in this hilarious review. It contains multiple spoilers but, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, and at some stage you are forced to, use this as a drinking game: every time you get to one of the points mentioned, drink! That review does, however, miss THE most awesome bit of the whole film: using an anchor to make a battleship do a handbrake turn. Seriously.
The plot: aliens are coming in response to the message we sent and they want to TAKE OVER THE WORLD. Or something. Since there’s no actual communication, how do we know that? Oh yeh, because they’re ALIENS. Then plucky sailors fight them off. Where plucky sailors include Rhianna trying to look badass, some punk kid who turns out to be a genius, and a bunch of old dudes who just happen to be hanging around.
The characters: there are none. They’re all just cardboard cut-outs.
The one good thing this movie proves: Liam Neeson really, really doesn’t care what you think anymore.
Eagle Eye
We saw it today. It was a lot better than I expected, to be honest.
Shia is pretty crap. The chick was ok. Billy Bob Thornton is great.
I love the plane-in-the-tunnel trick.
I really wasn’t expecting what this turned out to be, but it made sense (you know, in context, where “making sense” is associated with “utter suspension of belief”).
Lots of explosions! And car chases! And scenes where I couldn’t really follow who was where!
I enjoyed it a lot.
The Contractor
Barely redeemed by the presence of Wesley Snipes. Rather disappointing. Some okay action sequences, an interesting enough if not exactly original story, and a silly final scene. In fact, it gets sillier in retrospect.
*sigh* I seem not to be doing very well in my adventures to try movies I’ve not heard of, recently. Perhaps there’s a reason I haven’t heard of them.
Resident Evil
In my defence, I didn’t actually realise it was a zombie movie.
What unmitigated crap!
OK, so Milla Jovovitch is pretty cool; and the dude – when I finally realised he was the delightful Black Prince in A Knight’s Tale – is pretty spunky… so not actually ‘unmitigated’.
Largely unmitigated crap!
Boycott
I saw a preview today that makes me shudder and call for a boycott.
House Bunny.
Now, with a title like that, it’s hard not to desperately want to see it, yeh? And the lead ‘actress’ looks like a wannabe Goldie Hawn. What could possibly be bad about that?
Old Playboy Bunny goes to be a sorority Mom. Turns nerdy girls into glamour queens.
Because what all of us nerdy girls desperately want is to be liked for our boobs, not our brains. Yup.
Anyway, I say: argh! and Boycott!
/grumble away into my little nerdy hidey-hole…
ETA: someone pointed out to me that I don’t actually want a boycott, as I was never going to see it in first place. I more want a “violently object loudly to the movie at every opportunity” movement.
Next: A Public Service Announcement
That is, it’s next up; and it’s about Next.
Sometimes I’m so clever I amaze myself.
At any rate: Next. Nic Cage, Jessica Biel, Julianne Moore. Las Vegas magician can see 2 minutes into the future but only about himself. How could it possibly not be an awesome B-grade flick??
I spent most of the movie wondering just how much clout you have to have before you get away with having really, really bad hair in a movie. Because in this one, Cage’s hair is distractingly bad. Worse than his acting.
Oh, and the movie? Avoid at all costs. Rarely have I seen worse.
Two utterly different movies
1. Aeon Flux. I love this movie. I love the look, I love Theron, I love Csokas… it’s just wonderful. I’ve never seen the animated series and from the stills I don’t want to. For me, this movie exists in glorious isolation. Yes, there are vague resonances with cloning issues today (and it could be interesting to draw parallels between it and Children of Men), but they’re not important for my enjoyment of the film. It’s just cool, and it remains so – this must be the third time I’ve seen it, and I could probably rewatch it every year or so.
2. Dukes of Hazzard. One that, frankly, I thought I would never bother to watch, but it was just sitting there, and J convinced me we should give it a go. So, OK, it’s hilarious in spots. And there’s not quite as much of Jessica Simpson’s boobs as I had expected. The car chases are fun to watch; Luke and Bo are an enjoyable duo, and it’s played well by Scott and Knoxville. Boss Hogg could have been a bit more evil, I thought – he wasn’t quite as hateful as I anticipated. And heck, who doesn’t like a spot of Willie Nelson being a moonshine-swilling, Korean War vet? So it was entirely appropriate fun for a Saturday night.
And I didn’t even know there was something missing
From my life, that is. Until now.
Now that I am 15 minutes into Barbarella, I realise that there had previously been a gaping hole in my life. No longer! Filled with Jane Fonda, hairy wallpaper, Jane Fonda’s boobs, a lot of plastic and the knowledge that Duran Duran is the name of a character in the movie. Which makes them even more screwy than I previously thought.
Oh, and now there are nasty biting dolls after Our Heroine. Hmm, an excuse to remove more of Jane’s clothing, clearly.
I’m not sure I’ll be able to watch the whole thing, to be honest.
It’s just so wrong
So very, very wrong.
My love and I both had crap days. We both got home tonight feeling the need for utter mindlessness, so when we discovered The World is Not Enough waiting for us, it felt like fate.
It’s just such utter crap!
Denise Richards – Dr Christmas Jones – argh! What an embarrassment to the sorority of Bond girls everywhere!
Even Sophie Marceau is pretty crap. And I loved Hamish Macbeth, but Robert Carlyle is also quite average.
As for Pierce Brosnan… well, it’s reaching Roger Moore levels of stupid one-liners, in this one. The stunts aren’t quite as daft as they get in the next one – and the speed boat chase is pretty cool – but still, I feel quite impatient watching it a second (third? Can’t remember) time.
Perfect, though, for a Monday night with the need to do nothing.
Deja-Vu
Another movie review…
We got Deja-Vu throuh BigPond Movies, and it waited on our shelf to be watched for a good number of weeks. We finally got around to it and… hmm. Interesting.
I really enjoy Denzel Washington movies. He’s a great actor. We had no real idea what this movie was about before we watched it, which might have been our mistake. The movie’s mistake is largely that it doesn’t really know what genre it wants to be. In general it is basically a detective story – quite an interesting one, too. And very clearly post Sept 11, too (as are many movies of this type, since they so often make use of the idea of rogue terrorists, or the safety precautions necessary to hopefully deterring them). But then it goes into this weird scifi thing, involving time travel and bizarro paradoxes (paradoces?) that just got, well, weird. And bizarro.
In theory I liked the idea behind the film, but I don’t think it was done with enough panache. Or gumption. Or balls, perhaps – “we like this time travel idea, but we don’t want it to be tooo out there, so reel it in a bit…”.
I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I could recommend it to anyone as a great movie. You’d have to be a mighty big fan of Denzel, or want to see how to mix (or not) standard detective work with scifi in a movie. Or, you know, at home by yourself with nothing to do on a rainy night. Possibly with chocolate, popcorn, and/or alcohol.
