Comedy, 93 Minutes, 2007
I’m really surprised that this one slipped through the cracks for so long. I do remember when it was being released and remember that “not good enough to pay theater prices for” feeling but then I completely lost track of it.
“All Superheroes Must Die” on IMDB
Thriller, 78 Minutes, 2011
We’re going to give this one a lot of leeway for the sheer audacity of attempting to produce a superhero flick with a budget in the dozens of dollars. Instead of, like everybody else, producing a shitty, derivative zombie movie these guys at least tried something different. They get credit up front for that no matter what.
Zombie alert!
See the review of “Resident Evil” on our sister site, MoreBrains.com dedicated to all things zombie!
Comedy/Musical, 112 Minutes, 2012
My 10-year old daughter begged to watch this movie about a cappella singing. Why not? The movie lets us know that a cappella singing is the coolest God-damndest thing in the entire world! If you could smoosh extreme cliff-diving, lion-taming and sex into one glistening ball of awesome you might approach how cool a cappella singing is. For my part I immediately shoved the movie into the corner of my brain where anything I’ve ever seen about “Glee” goes to wither and die painfully.
Why did I end up liking it so much?
“Escape from Planet Earth” on IMDB
Family, 89 Minutes, 2013
It’s a digitally animated family film! It has famous people (a few former A-listers and a solid set of B-listers)! There are multiple cute side-kicky characters! It has references to pop culture! It has a heartwarming message! It’s really nothing special.
Thriller, 92 Minutes, 2012
The original “Taken” [IMDB] was something of an oddity among action movies. In a genre split between biceps and explosions or massive conspiracies and lone-wolf operatives it was a simpler, smaller more intimate movie. Yes, Liam Neeson’s [IMDB] Bryan Mills commanded resources and skills out of scope for most but the story was universal: somebody took his daughter and he was going to get her back. I enjoyed it immensely.
Sci-fi/Action, 95 Minutes, 2012
To simplify things right off the bat: this is “Escape from New York” [IMDB] in space. Instead of an abandoned metropolis we’ve got a giant space prison. Instead of Snake Plissken we get Snow. Instead of Donald Pleasence [IMDB] as the president we get Maggie Grace [IMDB] as the president’s daughter (so that we can insert romantic tension).
Horror?, 87 Minutes, 2012
The SyFy channel continues its unspoken mission to destroy the art of filmmaking. They’ve seen the future and it’s a giant machine that takes two things, smooshes them together and makes them worse than they ever could be alone.
Drama/Sci-fi, 172 Minutes, 2012
I had been attracted to this by the trailers but lost track of it until I noticed it available on Amazon Instant Video. I couldn’t honestly remember what about it attracted me. I knew that Tom Hanks [IMDB] seems to pick scripts well and that I’d never been completely disappointed by the Wachowski’s. We ended up watching it, my lovely bride and I, without bothering to get any more information on it.
We loved it. Both of us. We didn’t understand shit. Neither of us.
I recently caught the end of “Cowboys & Aliens” on cable again and as I watched the climatic battle I remembered the bit of my original review about how Hollywood was getting in a rut with its aliens:
Grey, hairless, oddly-bent knees, big teeth, covered in mucus and dripping with drool. It started with “Aliens” of course but then we got “Battle L.A.”, “Super 8″, “Independence Day”, “Skyline”, “Pitch Black” and everything from “Avatar” that you weren’t supposed to want to bang.
As I watched the sequence again I was struck by something that solidified my problem with all of these designs. The one thing that neatly represents all my complaints and frustrations.
Where are all the pants?
These are advanced civilizations. They’ve perfected space travel, energy weaponry and (I assume) fiscal accounting policies and practices. Don’t any of them wear pants? Togas? Kilts? Uniforms of any kind? Even if only to tell the grey, backwards-kneed space janitors from the grey, backward-kneed space generals? Do aliens really not have a bikini area?
