Tag: Film

Movie Review: Video Game High School

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IMDB, Video Game High School“Video Game High School” on IMDB

Sci-Fi, 123 Minutes, 2012

[This isn’t technically a movie.  Rather it’s a web series whose first season has been cut into a movie for distribution on NetFlix.  I’m going to treat it like a movie.  So there.]

This entire thing is unabashed, shameless pandering to the video game crowd.  In this world video games are king.  Good players are the rock stars and every teen wants to go to “Video Game High School”.  Brian D is an everyman schlep who accidentally frags the school’s star, “The Law”, and gets a scholarship for his trouble.

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Movie Review: Star Trek, Into Darkness

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IMDB, Star Trek, Into Darkness“Star Trek, Into Darkness” on IMDB

Sci-Fi, 132 Minutes, 2013

Like the horribly disappointing “Promethues” [Our Review], this was written, in part, by Damon Lindelof [IMDB] who seems to take a perverse pleasure in completely ignoring beloved source material.  He did the same thing, by the way, with “World War Z” which I recently reviewed at our sister site, MoreBrains.com.  This guy is getting on my nerves.

Like those other movies you can consider this in two ways.  As a stand-alone film this really isn’t that bad.  It’s got some real, ugly stupid but as a mindless summer flick it’s not that bad.  As a “Star Trek” movie?  It really sucked.

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Movie Review: Iron Man 3

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IMDB, Iron Man 3“Iron Man 3” on IMDB

Action, 130 Minutes, 2013

[By way of explanation, this review was written on Sept 19.  I may have also sent the spellchecker into a neurotic spiral of depression.]

Ahoy, maties!  This be the third picture show in the “Iron Man” series.  Comin’ in the roiling wake of “The Avengers” [IMDB] it struggles like a drunkin’ tar heaved overboard.  Our rum-soaked sea-dog, Tony Stark, is now bedeviled by panic attacks, insomnia and insecurity after saving the whole of the seven seas from an alien boarding party in New York.

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Movie Review: Amélie

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IMDB, Amelie“Amélie” on IMDB

Comedy, 122 Minutes, 2001

I recently decided to introduce this film, one of my absolute, all-time favorite movies for ever-and-ever, to my kids.  Both of them, ages 11 and 14, groaned out loud at the idea of “reading a movie”.  Both were completely entranced, as I knew they would be, in the first 10 minutes.

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Movie Review: Friends with Kids

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IMDB, Friends with Kids“Friends with Kids” on IMDB

Comedy, 107 Minutes, 2011

This is a spiritual sibling to “Bridesmaids” [IMDB] both in tone and in the simple fact that the two share a hell of a lot of their casts.  For the greater part, the movies are aimed at the same people, have similar levels of tastelessness and generally both work pretty well.

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Movie Review: World’s Greatest Dad

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IMDB, World's Greatest Dad“World’s Greatest Dad” on IMDB

Comedy, 99 Minutes, 2009

Oh damn, this is a good movie.  Written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait [IMDB], this perfectly encapsulates his particular outlook.  It celebrates the best in us by examining the crappiest of us.  This is an actual piece of God-damn genius.

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Movie Review: Olympus Has Fallen

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IMDB, Olympus Has Fallen“Olympus Has Fallen” on IMDB

Action, 120 Minutes, 2013

This is one of those “worst case” scenario movies that Hollywood loves.  Take something that couldn’t really happen – in this case a military invasion of the White House – then figure out a way it could.  You have to, you know, ignore some meddlesome facts along the way but it can make for a fun movie.  (As is often the case multiple people seemed to have the same idea which is why we got “White House Down” [IMDB] a few months later.)

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Movie Review: Blood: The Last Vampire

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IMDB, Blood, The Last Vampire“Blood: The Last Vampire” on IMDB

Action/Horror, 91 Minutes, 2009

This should have been my kind of movie.  A hot Japanese, 400-year old, half-demon school-girl hunting evil demons with a sword in the age of disco – how could it go wrong?  Apparently in a quite a few ways, although I did enjoy it overall.

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Movie Review: Epic

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IMDB, Epic“Epic” on IMDB

Family/Adventure, 102 Minutes, 2013

This was fine, really.  Just fine.  The animation is nice.  The story is simple enough.  It has Chris O’Dowd [IMDB] in it; he makes everything better.  There’s funny sidekicks, lots of action, a nasty little villain and love story light on the kissy-face.

It’s just fine.  Not quite, you know, “epic”, but really, just fine.

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Movie Review: Moon

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IMDB, Moon“Moon” on IMDB

Sci-Fi, 97 Minutes, 2009

Having watched “Oblivion” [Our Review], a movie that breeds comparisons to this one despite having only tenuous similarities, I decided that it was time that my lovely bride see it.

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