MOVIE REVIEW: Bug

So you may be asking yourselves why I didn't review "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End." You want a review? It was boring. Nothing new to show for the franchise and a terrible way to end it. Think of "X3." Instead I choose to review a film that deserved the words printed on the page. I heard about "Bug" months ago and the preview peaked my interest. Ashley Judd in a horror movie directed by William Friedkin, who also directed the original "Exorcist."

The film stars Ashley Judd as Agnes, a lonely and trashy waitress who lives out of a motel in Oklahoma. She has a jail bird for an ex husband, who is played by Harry Connick Jr. For such a nice guy, he also seems to play the freaky assholes. So anyway, Agnes meets a drifter by the name of Peter (Michael Shannon). Peter is a shy guy, also extremely neurotic, who takes a liking to Agnes and he stays with her for the night. They begin to talk and fall in love and the next thing we know they have sex. Then Peter starts acting crazier. He confides in Agnes because he trusts her. He tells her of an army experiment where he was force fed pills and tortured. The results are bugs that are in his system that feed off of his blood. Sounds scary enough to me, that is, until we realize that the bugs do not exist. Peter is mentally unstable, delusional and schizophrenic. The problem here is that Agnes is also off her rocker. She has gone through an abusive marriage and the loss of her first child, so she clings to Peter because she is just happy to have someone to take care of and be taken care of in return. What follows is a downward spiral of sanity.

This has to be the weirdest movie of the year by far. If you have seen previews or read anything, it will not prepare you. Not even close. This movie is not what you expect it to be, nor is it for everyone. What stands out in the film are the performances. Ashley Judd is a great actress, but this is the best I have seen her in awhile. She gives an almost over the top performance that goes from a lonely bitter woman, to an absolute nutcase of the most psychotic proportions. Michael Shannon also shines here as Peter, who we can tell from the get go is not quite right.
There is not much gore here. No real blood. One scene in which Peter kills a man, then some pretty disturbing self inflicted wounds. Nothing that “Saw” hasn’t already fucked us up with.
Like I mentioned above, the movie is not for everybody, but the critics seem to love the film and its performances so far. I enjoyed the movie on a certain level, but would not recommend it just based on its weirdness factor.

The End of the Action Film As We Know It

Action movies have been a sad state of affairs for years. Hollywood has become so liberal and now we all have to suffer as a result. We’re all a little too PC and afraid of offending different groups of people. I say fuck you to those groups and fuck you to Hollywood. What happened to the good old days of action movies? What happened to “Man Movies” like “Predator 2,” or the original “Die Hard?” Oh, that’s right. They turned into the PG-13 sequels “Alien Vs Predator” and “Live Free or Die Hard.” Fuck you, FOX.

When did ‘R’ rated violence become such a gamble? Do not blame the 9/11 attacks either. I refuse to believe it had anything to do with it. 9/11 was a tragedy for sure, but people have been dying as a result of war for hundreds of years, so this is no excuse.

Somewhere along the way we lost touch with good old fashioned ass kickery. There are quite a few people to blame here. Douche bag mothers for one. You know who I am talking about. When Columbine happened, parents blamed movies and music. How stupid do you have to be to blame movies and music? Why not take responsibility for the fact that as a parent you failed? Mother’s across America even tried to shut down our beloved Maddox when they formed “Mother’s Against Maddox.” Instead of monitoring and restricting what their children saw on the internet, they choose to ruin it for everybody. To say the least they failed, so they couldn’t even get that right. I’d offer suicide up for them as advice, but something tells me they would just suck at that, too. The entire Metro sexual movement pisses me off, too, but enough has been said about that without me having to go into great detail.

What brought this on? An article a few weeks back that declared Orlando Bloom as the next big action hero. What the FUCK?! If you are a heartthrob to millions of slutty little girls, then you can’t be an action hero. Do you think any women have Stallone posters on their wall? Fuck no they don’t. Not unless they have a Desert Eagle under their pillow when they sleep at night. No woman fantasizes about what a date with Chuck Norris would be like. Never. Not a single one. Why? Because Chuck Norris would round house kick your face into oblivion when you leaned in for a goodnight kiss. If there is a woman who has a poster of “Hard to Kill” on her wall I want to meet her so I can call her a damn liar. No woman claims that action movies are their favorite genre. In fact, I predict a huge surge in spousal abuse cases after women start referring to “those action packed Bloom movies.”

I had high hopes that the remaining Hollywood Heavyweights would save us from this slump. The fact remains that we don’t have anymore action stars. Vin Diesel is a douche bag so don’t bring up his name. Riddick sucks. With Schwarzenegger never coming back to movies, we are left with Stallone and Willis. Norris is tackling the direct to video market, so we’ll leave him out for now. I am dying to see “Live Fee or Die Hard.” Even after I learned that Fox toned it down to fit a PG-13 rating. That’s right. Less language, less violence, and less of what makes the “Die Hard” series so great.

The only hope is next year’s “John Rambo.” It very well may be the last great action film we ever see. Stallone recently released three minutes of footage from the film. The footage included Rambo chopping someone’s head off, shooting a soldier just before he explodes at close range, ripping someone’s throat out, then capping it all off with gutting an unsuspecting asshole. Now this is what it is all about. Stallone practically financed the film in addition to writing and directing. No major studio is attached, which is why he can get away with this. When the film does get a studio attached, it will be for distribution purposes only. I love it. Click below to see the footage in all its violent awesomeness.

The “Rambo” series has been the frontrunner for violence. When it was released in the late 80s, “Rambo III” was considered the most violent film ever made. Stallone knows how to make a great action film and he isn’t afraid of being PC or offending anyone.

Stallone even knows how to talk shit. After reading the headline, “Orlando Bloom is the next action hero,” Stallone sent a copy of the “John Rambo” footage to Bloom with a note. The note simply said, “This is what a real action hero looks like.” He is absolutely right.

MOVIE REVIEW: 28 Weeks Later

There are two things I am afraid of if and when a zombie outbreak occurrs. One would be that they run fast. I don't just mean fast either. I mean gold medal, running from the cops, eat your ass fast. The second being the United States military. Man, I'd be fucked in this situation. Even if I managed to outrun the infected, I would probably get sniped by a good old boy with an itchy trigger finger. Such is the case with "28 Weeks Later," the sequel to the excellent "28 Days Later." The sequel manages to excell in just about every area as opposed to the original, not to mention it is the best in the genre.

The film begins with survivors holding up in a small cottage. Two of the members include Don (Robert Carlyle) and his wife Alice. After a boy on the run appears at the door all hell breaks loose. The infected barge their way in and just put a monkey wrench in the survivor's program. Nothing like getting your throat chewed out to ruin your day. So Don and Alice almost escape when an infected comes between them. Don can either risk his own life to "maybe" save his wife, or get the fuck out and save his own ass. Don makes the logical choice and takes off, leaving everyone to die shitty horrible deaths. Now ladies, I am all for defending my woman against a crazy person, or just your average mugger, but the minute the dude is growling, chewing and running, your ass is on your own. So then we jump ahead six months or so and London has been declared a safe zone. The United States military has come in to save the day and make sure the infection is dead for good. It would certainly appear that way since the last infected person died a few months prior. So then we meet Don's children Tammy (Imogen Poots) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton), who were away at a private school when all of this occurred. So Don and the children reunite and he tells them the story of how he tried to save his wife, but to no avail. In classic dipshit fashion the children sneak out of quarantined London and to their old house to gather old photos so as not to forget their mother. Upon reaching the house, they discover Alice alive and well. Weird, huh? Oh it gets better. Turns out she has the virus, but cannot show symtoms. She is simply a carrier and can spread the disease through blood and saliva. After a quick kiss and make up between Don and Alice, Don quickly contracts the virus and becomes the first infected in months. Then it's wham, bam thank you ma'am I think I'll gouge your eyes out with my thumbs. Then it is code red as the infection spreads and London is once again fucked. Think that is bad? Well since the US military loses control of the situation, they begin to kill everyone, infected or not. So not only are the children, a sniper named Doyle (Jeremy Renner) and a medic (Rose Byrne) on the run from the hundreds of newly infected, they also must avoid the US military who is all about shooting first.This was a brutal movie. There pulled no punches here and kept it all in. Want to see people getting body parts bitten off? Sure. Want to see an infected gouge out his wife's eyes with his thumbs? You got it. It was in the brutality that this movie scared the shit out of me. There was a true sense of isolation and that things might be okay for awhile. Then BAM! It all goes to hell and you start to think to yourself, "Shit, nobody is safe." Nobody indeed. I promise you that this is no happy Hollywood movie. People get fucked up, and it might not be who you'd expect.

The performance by Robert Carlyle made the first third of the movie. Here is a guy who is an everyman. He is not a hero by any standards. He simply did what he had to do by leaving his wife, and you can tell it has eaten him up (pun there. Did you see it?) every single day of his life. He made a choice. One that nobody else could understand unless they had been in the same situation.

The film does indeed end on a much heavier note as opposed to the original. I was one of those people who liked the first movie, but not the ending. A happy ending just isn't what these movies are all about. This film shows up just how uncontrollable this virus is, and how it may never be stopped. That is, until we get the already in theory "28 Months Later." As I already stated above, this movie was brutal. It is leaps and bounds ahead of the "Dawn of the Dead" remake, which had been my favorite "zombie" film to date before this film. "28 Weeks Later" was just so intense and crazy that you may never again accept the slow moving pussy zombies that frequent the Romero films.

Best Actor of All Time?

I have been watching a lot of Tom Hanks movies as of late. It started when I saw a copy of "Turner and Hooch" for five bucks at Circuit City. I remember hearing Tom Hanks call it one of his favorite movies (he also said that out of all the films he has made, only five of them he would consider good), so I thought I would pick it up. Man I love that movie. Tom Hanks made some good movies pre-"Philadelphia," and I doubt we will see him do anything like those comedies again. It was "Turner and Hooch" that started my Hanks-a-thon and also got me thinking that he may be the best actor this world will ever see.

So next I watched "Forrest Gump." This has been called the performance of his career, and I would agree with a statement like that. There is so much to love about this movie. The best part, and this shows why Hanks is truly a great actor, is that for the duration of the film you forget that it is Tom Hanks. He brings life to a character that nobody wanted to play. In fact, just to show you that most people believed this film would fail, I have found a list of people who turned down roles in this movie. Both Bill Murray and Chevy Chase were offered the role, but turned it down. As for the role of 'Bubba,' both David Alan Grier and Dave Chappelle turned it down fearing the movie would be a huge flop. In several interviews since that time, Chappelle has called this a huge mistake on his part and a lifelong regret. The movie is just an incredible story of a man who everybody thought would amount to nothing (much like the movie itself). It is also one of those films that never gets old.

Winston Groom wrote the original novel, as well as its sequel, "Gump and Co." As of March 7, 2007 Groom and Paramount settled a dispute that allowed Paramount to purchase the film rights to "Gump and Co." This means that if all goes well, we may be seeing Hanks return to his signature role in the future.
So after that I started to think back to "Cast Away." I had only seen the movie once and it was when it first hit DVD back when I was working for Hollywood Video. I remember it being a good movie, but I had to go back to take another look. This is a film that relied heavily on the lead actor since much of the film has no dialogue. The filmmakers knew that they needed someone the audience could identify with and instantly like, and nobody fits the bill better than Hanks. So we get Tom Hanks stranded on an island after his plane crashes into the ocean. He spends over four years in solitude and the only thing that keeps him sane is a bloodstained volleyball named Wilson. Hanks lost fifty pounds for this role in the course of a year. He filmed the first half of the movies, then took a one year break to lose the weight, then came back to film the remainder. Now there is some dedication for your asses.
Another movie, which is one of my all time favorites, is "Philadelphia." "Philadelphia" proves that if Tom Hanks stars in a movie about a man with some kind of issue (in this case it's AIDS) he will get an Oscar. This was the role that really turned Hanks into a star as before this he was doing his string of comedies. This was the role that made people really take notice, and rightfully so. This also earned Hanks his first Oscar.

All this being said, Hanks has several films worth mentioning. "That Thing You Do," which Hanks wrote and directed is another great movie. "You've Got Mail," "Sleepless in Seattle," and even "The Da Vinci Code" are all worth mentioning. Speaking of that last one, Hanks has signed on for the sequel, "Angels and Demons," and it is also earning him the biggest payday of any actor at fifty million dollars.

MOVIE REVIEW: Spider-Man 3

The "Spider-Man" movies have been the cream of the superhero crop for Hollywood. They have all made a killing at the box office and have yet to lose any steam. Today mark's the release of "Spider-Man 3," and also mark's the best superhero trilogy thus far.

"Spider-Man 3" picks up exactly where we left off in the last one. Peter Parker is finally getting the recognition for being a hero. The city has Spider-Man fever. Everything from balloons to Halloween costumes are flooding the streets. Peter even plans to wed his long time girlfriend Mary Jane, played by the not so cute Kirsten Dunst. So with everything going so well and on a high, where do we go from here? Down. Straight down. Enter Flint Marco, played by Thomas Church. He is an ex-con who breaks out to steal money in order to save his daughter's life. While on the run, he stumbles upon a scientific experiment (which by the way has the worst security of all time as Flint is just about to hop a fence and BAM! Super powers). So now he becomes the Sandman. Of course, there is still Harry Osbourne. In the last movie he discovered his father's Goblin gear, so in this one we also get the New Goblin, played by James Franco. To top it all off, a new photographer takes Parker's job at the Dailey Bugle. Eddie Brock, played by Topher Grace, is a pushy and arrogant photographer who does whatever it takes to get the job done. In the course of the movie, a symbiote is introduced (in the laziest fashion I have ever seen, mind you) after a meteor strikes the Earth (right next to the only Superhero in town, of course). The symbiote is drawn to Parker and consumes him at his worst, thus bringing out his anger and hatred. Parker becomes a dark character and one of the film's villians surprisingly.

We also get to meet another familiar character from the comics in "Spider-Man 3." Gwen Stacey makes her first film appearance and is played by Bryce Dallas Howard. She gets her own paragraph because she is probably the most attractive superhero heroin of all time. It was rediculous. The entire film you wonder why Peter Parker wastes his time with Mary Jane? It makes no sense. Come on, if the movie was realistic Parker would have been consumed by the symbiote, became an asshole, and got the better woman.

We have to talk about it because it is why everyone wants to see this film. How did Raimi handle Venom? Raimi has said several times he had no intention of bringing Venom to the screen, so it is obvious the studio pressured him into it. I was expecting the worst since Venom is only in the film for about a half an hour at best. To my surprise, and with the exception of how the symbiote is introduced, Venom is handled exceptionally well. Topher Grace plays Eddie Brock perfectly. You can feel the man's hatred for Peter Parker as the movie goes on, all the way to the bell tower scene where the symbiote choses Brock over Parker. Then when he is in full Venom mode, we get to see that Raimi knows exactly what in the hell he is doing. It was insane how good Venom looked. He was "taken care of" in the end of the movie, but "taken care of" in the same way that Jason Vorhees or Freddy Kruger get taken care of. Meaning, his ass will be back for "Spider-Man 4."
The action was the best of the series. This time around we know all the characters well enough so we actually care what happens to them, as opposed to another failed superhero franchise (I'm looking at you, "X3"). Everything was taken up a notch and it really felt like a lot was at stake this time around.

The performances in the movie are good. James Franco, as usual, was the highlight for me. He has really stood out in this franchise. Topher Grace also did a really great job bringing Eddie Brock to the screen. Venom could have easily been crap had both Raimi and Grace not have handled it the way that they did.

"Spider-Man 3" will no doubt be a big winner this summer at the box office. Plans are already in place for "Spider-Man 4" with most of the original cast returning as long as Raimi returns as well. This film sealed the deal by being the best in the series, and making "Spider-Man" one of the best trilogies of all time.