Tag: Movie Reviews

Geekscape Movie Reviews: ‘Asher’

by AnalogJonesTOF

This Friday night I rented Asher – He’s a Hebrew hitman looking for love… and his retirement benefits.

Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Writer: Jay Zaretsky
Release Date: December 7, 2018
Runtime: 1 hour 44 minutes
Rated: R

Character Rundown
Ron Perlman plays Asher, a former Mossad member turned gun for hire.
Famke Janssen plays Sophie, a ballet teacher that takes care of her mother with dementia.
Richard Dreyfuss plays Avi, the man at the top who calls the shots.
Peter Facinelli plays Uziel, the younger hitman who was trained by Asher.
Jacqueline Bisset plays Dora, Sophie’s mother with dementia.

Geekscape Movie Reviews: 'Asher' | Asher Firing

Quick Synopsis
2018 seems to be the tough old man year. We’ve got The Oldman with a Gun starring Robert Redford at age 82, The Mule starring Clint Eastwood at 88 and now Asher starring a 68-year-old Ron Perlman. I’m not complaining, in fact, I love silver-haired character stories where the main protagonist questions their existence.

Asher lives a lonely life in a quiet apartment, eating dinner and drinking wine by himself every night at 8 pm. Asher has a routine that is foolproof. He works alone, gets his usual rate, shines his shoes and takes out his target. It’s rather enjoyable watching Asher’s tactics of making the “hit.” He lights up a cigarette, sets off the sprinklers and waits for his victim to come out of their door and BOOM, they’re dead. He even grabs a new umbrella for every job.

One night while Asher is getting ready to take down another mark, he passes out from walking up the stairs and falls into Sophie’s apartment. Sophie is a beautiful woman with somber brown eyes. Famke Janssen brings a lot of soul to this character. Instead of only being the love interest, she brings weight to Sophie’s character with witty banter and puzzling looks. Once Asher sees Sophie, he has to make her dinner. Sophie resists at first but decides to surprise him one night and change up his routine.

The story hits a snag when Asher decides to break his own rule of working alone. He takes a job with a younger hitman, Uziel, which Asher mentored. Uziel’s team needs back up, and Asher must cover them while they take out a house of rival mobsters.

After the job, Asher finds his world-changing, and he must find a way to keep it together along with getting Sophie out alive.

Pros:

Perlman seems to keep getting better with age. He may be older, but it seems to make him more interesting to watch. His grizzled look carries so many small details in how he walks and talks as Asher.

An older cast. Jacqueline Bisset is 74, Richard Dreyfuss is 71, Ron Pearlman is 68, and Famke Janssen is 53, they still can bring it. Hollywood is a young man/woman’s game, but that doesn’t mean it’s always better. This movie proves it.

Cons:

It can get a little sleepy at times. The Noir look coupled with the long takes can drag, but it’s a small nitpick.

Final Grade: B-

Thanks for reading, and check out our podcast Analog Jones and the Temple of Film. We are a VHS Podcast that breaks down the box art, trailers and behind the scenes.

– Stephen M. Bay

Geekscape Movie Review: ‘Godzilla Resurgence,’ (Shin Godzilla)

by AllieHanley

‘Godzilla Resurgence’ has finally tromped it’s way across the ocean from Japan and enters US theaters this Friday for a seven day engagement after opening this past summer in Japan.

The film’s original title “Shin Gojira” got a US name change that implies a sequel but is actually a reboot. Resurgence, as meaning to bring back something popular. The film title has changed several times but the takeaway is that “Shin” means God in Japanese, and Gojira means God too.

As Godzilla makes landfall you can’t help but think that this is some sort of version to the real life event of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami that decimated a large portion of Japan. The film goes to great length to show how officials respond to the disaster of Godzilla and plays a large part in the film.

In this new storyline, Godzilla is making his very first appearance arriving in Japan. He is the only monster featured in the film and the aspects of the original “Godzilla” are still there. He’s big, radioactive, and trounces the heck out of everything. There is a new aspect incorporated into this story that plays into Godzilla’s new gargantuan like size and that’s his ability to mutate. They’ve revamped his origin and even added some very cool abilities that fans will enjoy.

When Godzilla makes his first appearance in the film and comes ashore there’s this initial, less dangerous version of Godzilla. I was confused thinking this was a monster for Godzilla to fight? The creature’s got these googley eyes like a fish, and is not the giant you’d expect. However he still tears things up pretty good with cars flying everywhere and people running willie-nillie.

Being a Japanese film, the tone is more true to the original movies that came out of Japan and not the US versions. There may be a small disconnect from fans of the US Godzilla movies, vs a fan of Godzilla’s original versions. This is the 29th movie featuring Godzilla, and this film is a reboot.

Initially, this version was confusing for me. I was wondering what did they do to Godzilla? It soon becomes apparent that Godzilla has the ability to mutate rapidly, and since he’s no longer living in the deep feeding off of radioactivity he changes to meet his survival needs. You will see those needs as he’s attacked and some new abilities that are insanely cool.

The more equates to the biggest aspect of the monster to date. He towers over Tokyo easily trouncing the biggest skyscrapers. He’s so powerful in fact, that there’s a lot of time spent showing the Japanese struggling to decide how to attack him: And then when they do… and it doesn’t work, they spend an inordinate amount of time deciding if they should call on the US for help. This was a unique experience in a film seeing how the US is reflected upon by modern Japanese. It’s a film obviously, so not sure how accurate it portrays their view of the US, but it was novel and interesting. Also, you may note that there really aren’t any women featured except for one out of probably 50 men. I kept wondering if there are any women in positions of power in Japan as art often a reflection of real life.

If you want to see Godzilla in his modern and giant magnificence you’ll need to be on the look out as he’s playing in just 440 theaters from October 11 to 18, thanks to Funmation Studios and Toho Studios that made it possible for him to play in the US.

Lover’s of Godzilla will find a lot to enjoy in this Japanese rendition that pulls mostly from the original incarnation including his Atomic Breath. Aspects that made many fans of the giant monster are still there including bits of the original music and sound effects. However, the insane amount of time spent showing how the Japanese government responds to his arrival and who is responsible for making the decisions is just wearisome. If you are ok with 1/3 Godzilla beating the absolute crud out of Tokyo, and 2/3 spent devoting to whom is responsible, and trying to keep the masses calm then you will enjoy.

3 out of 5

The Geekscape Movie Review – Prometheus

by Matt Landsman

In the 1979 Ridley Scott classic, Alien, the terrors were dark, mysterious and rarely seen.  This isn’t the case at all in Prometheus, where the origin of the titular creature in Alien is explained, and new, even larger questions about humanity are raised.  I’m glad that it was Scott who chose to revisit his own work rather than another director. Prometheus is not prequel so much as it’s a further exploration of the same universe, but little did we know just how vast this universe actually was. The film is an anxious, relentless, cerebral horror film.  And make no mistake, it’s more horrifying than any of the previous installments in the franchise.

In the haunting opening images, a pearly white, perfectly-muscled tall humanoid called an “engineer” (Space Jockeys if you want to go by Alien terms) is dropped off by a ship and abandoned on a planet where he must carry out a sacrificial deed.  Flash forward quite a long time to where explorer scientists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and her boyfriend Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) have discovered ancient cave drawings of early humans communicating with beings from the stars.  Aging tycoon Peter Weyland (a heavily made-up Guy Pearce) commissions Shaw and Holloway to lead a mission to a mysterious planet which has been mapped out in the cave drawings in an attempt to meet whoever made man kind and answer some of life’s essential questions.

In the two years it takes to arrive on the alien world, the robot David (Michael Fassbender) tends to the ship and studies the humans in a state of stasis. He takes it all in and he’s amused by human-kind.  From the second he first appears on screen to the end of the film, David steals the entire movie.  Fassbender’s performance has a curious gravity that makes him the most likeable character, regardless of his moral and emotional ambiguity.

Once on the planet, Holloway is quick to point out ant-hill like structures saying that “God doesn’t use straight lines.”  But weren’t they going there to find god in the first place? Anyway, the team of scientists and David don helmets and head into the ant-hill like cavernous structure.  The things they find inside lead them to evidence about the origins of mankind, but manage to raise even larger existential questions as the crew members are horrifically picked off one by one.

Prometheus is more grotesque any in the “series” to date (and it being part of said series is debatable).  In tone, it’s most comparable to Alien but a lot more physically grounded and a lot less grounded philosophically.  It’s open to some big interpretations. Aliens turned out to be more of a war/action film, and it’s true that there are elements of that thrown into the mix here too and Alien 3 and 4 aren’t even worth talking about.  The images in the film are meant to be graphic and shocking, to create terrifying iconography that would stay with the viewer to leave the same impression that you would get experiencing “God’ close up for the first time yourself.  What would you say to him? What would you expect him to tell you?

There are some ties to Alien, notably at the end (as to be expected) but the movie feels more like a spinoff within the same universe than a sequel.  This works for me because it shows just how vast this universe can be.  While the technology at the heart of the film and biomechanics are largely fantasized, they feel very realistic, and the film offers a very logical idea as to where we came from.  This is where the movie really shines for me.  Without ever giving a concrete answer, it guides us toward the direction of one viewpoint while still leaving the basic question of man’s identity in the scheme of things open-ended.

One of the most beautiful aspects of the film is that Elizabeth Shaw seeks to meet those who created her and ask them why.  Holloway tells David that the humans made him because “they could” to which David tells him that’s an incredibly disappointing answer. Every base is covered from a logical standpoint.  This is a thinking man’s movie for sure even though it still has the visual trappings and mild sense of humor of a big action blockbuster.  Prometheus is a winner in my book, which is a big sigh of relief since I was greatly anticipating it.  Not only does it serve as a fitting prequel to Alien which is just about as good as the original, but it broadens the horizons, makes the viewer feel small and leaves them asking all the right questions.  Don’t miss this one.

Guilty Pleasures: The Guyver

by Saintmort

 

After my write up on Dirty Work Jonathan has asked me to do a more detailed Guilty Pleasures. So unlike previous guilty pleasures I’ll be discussing content of the movies, so I guess that means spoilers. Be warned!

 


Don’t be fooled by the cover. Luke Skywalker in tact does not play the Guyver

 

THE GUYVER

 

When I was a child I used to watch A LOT of cable television. I don’t know if that’s considered good parenting or brilliant parenting but it meant I saw a lot of weird shit (in my blog I even discussed the time that I accidentally watched Re-Animator and had many a sleepless night). On one particular moment of unsupervised television viewing I saw two monsters boxing and one crushed the other’s head and I was freaked out and turned off the TV.

 

Later, as if by some type of twisted torture (or a moment of divine intervention) that weekend, I stayed at my friend’s house and he had rented a movie called The Guyver. The film began with a long text scroll and voice over. This is always a good sign. I mean, Star Wars had text scrolls and that movie was good. In reality though, this means that the film is too complicated for someone to understand it ‘off the street’. The Guyver was no exception. The text explains how Aliens created humans (the scientologists were right) but gave some humans the ability to transform into super monsters. However to even the playing field the aliens created a device called “The Unit” which gives no advantage to this super monsters but can turn the average human into THE GUYVER (hey that’s the name of the movie).

 

Immediately after the text scroll, it shows an Asian scientist running from Jimmie Walker, a fat Russian dude and Michael Berryman. I remember in my brain thinking ‘oh shit, this seems familiar’. Then the Asian and Michael Berryman transformed into Monsters and started boxing ‘oh no, this is the scene I saw earlier this week! I can’t act scared in front of my friend.’ Luckily the scene was nothing in reality and I was able to enjoy the film.

 

It turned out that that the Asian scientist was supposed to meet up with a detective (overacted by Mark Hamill). He witness the murder from afar (thus he didn’t see the monsters) and informs his daughter about it. Her boyfriend Sean Baker follows them (thinking that something is going on between them) and stumbles onto the unit and through a humorous mishap of falling into The Unit turns into the Guyver.

 

Meanwhile Detective Skywalker and Asian girlfriend are kidnapped. Sean goes through a 30 minute or so battle only to lose and die (or so we think). The evil head of the monsters is giving Asian daughter a tour of the labs where they meet Dr. East (played by Jeffery Combs; apparently cast in the role because in Re-Animator he plays Dr. West). Despite Sean dying, the Guyver tries to clone itself and brings Sean back from the dead. Why? Because in cinema the laws of logic take a backseat to the laws of convenience. Sean saves the day and walks off into the sunset.

 

The Guyver was a direct to video release by a first time director. This basically means it’s already set to fail from the start. Add in the fact that it’s also based on a beloved manga and there wasn’t much of a chance for this movie to begin with. However, it became one of my favorite movies at the time and I’d constantly show it to people (almost all of them hating it).

 

I can understand why people would hate this movie. For starters, Mark Hamill over acts like there’s no tomorrow. His character is like Sam Spade without the charm, wit or likability.

 

Beyond that there’s a massive amount of monster characters in this film, most of which are there as comedic relief. They’re so overly animated though that all the humor (for the most part) falls flat (although I thought it was hilarious as a kid). They actors walk around throwing random shit across rooms and it feels like your watching a Ghoulies movie with actors playing the titular characters instead of puppets. The only one who brings in a slightly enjoyable performance is Jimmie Walker. Most of the humor of his character though is driven on the fact that he’s a walking ball of rapping and jive talking stereotypes.

 

 

The fight sequence in the middle is so extended and hard to follow that there’s a clearly ADR-ed line of dialogue in which a character says ‘Oh Good, The Whole Team is Here Now’. This dialogue exists strictly because it’s hard to keep track of exactly HOW many monsters there are and this is truly a shame because the best element of this movie (and the reason I still love it) is Screaming Mad George’s creatures.

 

Screaming Mad George might be ass at directing, but he’s an incredible effects man. Before directing this he did the creature effects for Arena, Predator and Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master. In the latter, he did the infamous cockroach death scene considered by many fans to be the best death in Freddy history. His quality in effects continue in the Guyver which legitimately contains some impressive transformation sequences.

 

The original intention of this film was to be a modern American Tokusatsu film. In that, it’s more successful in it’s goal than say 1998’s Godzilla remake. For those of you who don’t know, Tokusatsu is an Asian film genre in which people in rubber monster costumes fight. It has even inspired a wrestling federation (Kaiju Big Battel). However, Screaming Mad George’s mistake is going too far in the real of Monsters. He’s trying to make Destroy All Monsters but instead he should have aimed for Godzilla Vs. King Kong. What made Destroy All Monsters work is that over the years we had gotten used to these various monsters and cared about some of them (mainly Gojira). In the Guyver, we have so many different monsters and our hero that we barely have time to get to like them (even the villains, we hardly get to enjoy the creature design).

 

The Guyver was followed by a sequel Guyver: Dark Hero which was much more well received and while I enjoy it, it will never hold the space place in my hear that the original head-squishing Guyver has.

 

 

When he’s not watching poor Americanized adaptations of classic Japanese manga Matt Kelly is found tweeting, writing in his blog Pure Mattitude and hosting his podcast The Saint Mort Show.

 

Hellboy 2 – The Geekscape Review

by Jonathan

I’m not that into Hellboy. I think he’s a cool looking character and Mike Mignola’s art is amazing. I think the stories are fun but it’s just a bit on the light side and I could never get too invested in them. I am, however, a huge fan of Guillermo Del Toro. So I was quite excited when the first Hellboy came out. It gave a filmmaker I adored a fun world to play in. The end result came off a bit like the Hellboy comics though. It was fun, it looked cool, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care too much.

Since the release of Hellboy, Guillermo Del Toro has grown immensely as a filmmaker and has proven himself to have one of the most vivid imaginations of any director working today. He has also earned critical acclaim and his name now carries some weight. So it’s a new, more powerful Del Toro who is tackling Hellboy 2, and it shows.

Hellboy 2 is a wild ride through a mad genius’ imagination. Del Toro finally had the freedom to go all out and every inch of the screen is filled with amazing little details. He took Mike Mignola’s world and really made it his own without betraying the source material, and in doing so turned something I only kind of liked into something I loved.

Yes, I loved Hellboy 2. I think it improves on the original in every way. The story is clearer and better told, the action is more spectacular, the visuals are breathtaking, and the characters that matter were front and center. In Hellboy we were forced to view this world through the eyes of a human outsider and as such we were one step removed from everything. This time we are with Hellboy and his crew and we are thoroughly entrenched in their world and it makes us do something we didn’t the first time around. It makes us care.

Luckily we have a good story to care about. The plot of Hellboy 2 is very simple but it’s told in an incredibly strong manner. There is a thing the bad guys want and that the good guys can’t let them have. That thing of course doesn’t really matter. It’s a classic MacGuffin that just serves as an excuse to get our characters moving. We aren’t buried under boring exposition. The real meat of the movie is with the characters and their relationships. Everyone gets screen time here and their characters are very clearly and strongly defined. We watch as Hellboy deals with doubt over his place in the world, as Liz deals with fear over the future of her family, as Abe deals with an impossible romance. We also get a villain who isn’t just “evil”. He’s not a cardboard cutout. He has depth and he has purpose and he is sympathetic, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Character and plot are all well and good, but the real star of the show here is the art design and makeup work. There are very few humans in this movie but there are tons of monsters and they all exist. What I mean by that is these aren’t empty CG shells. This isn’t one character design repeated ad naseum in a computer. These are wall to wall crazy creatures made with practical effects and makeup. They have personality, they have life, and it’s absolutely wonderful to watch. That’s not to say there isn’t any CG but it is used sparingly, and it is used to enhance rather than replace.

I was really taken aback by all of the different character designs on display here. It’s either an effects department’s wet dream or worst nightmare. The Troll Market scene in particular steals the show and has been getting a lot of comparisons to the Cantina scene in Star Wars. For my money this outdoes Star Wars by a large margin.

Makeup can only go so far without a skilled actor making it move and all the major players bring their A game here. Perlman IS Hellboy. He is so comfortable in the role and completely makes you forget that there is a nearly 60 year old human in there. Doug Jones finally gets to use his real voice in a movie and, even though I preferred David Hyde Pearce, does an admirable job as Abe Sapien. His true talent lies in his body language though and in this department he is second to none. The big surprise this time around was Seth MacFarlane, of Family Guy fame, as Johann Krauss, the German accented gas… guy. He provides some of the funniest moments in the film and is a very welcome addition.

I feel like I should say something negative about the movie, but there is really very little wrong with it. Kid Hellboy looks kind of stupid. Abe’s relationship with the elf princess seems a bit abrupt and he makes a questionable decision because of it that you don’t quite buy. I’m really having to try to nit pick here.

Point is, the movie is awesome and I’m kind of bummed that The Hobbit is going to keep us from seeing Hellboy 3 for quite some time.

Sex & The City… UPDATED with TWO Geekscape Reviews!

by Noel Nocciolo

Editor’s Warning – I’m telling you now. This review has spoilers. It does not fuck around. It does not pull punches. I got about 2 lines into it before I was like “no way. spoilers. everywhere.” and I do NOT want to ruin this experience for myself. When I one day have it. In a magical world called Never. But luckily, our own Noel Nocciolo was incredible enough to dig down deep and write this up for you all…

When Sex And The City aired originally on HBO, I was in college in New York City. Looking back, the series provided major memories for me, both good and bad. It seemed fitting that I attend the 12:01 a.m. screening on opening night, with Rachel, a close friend from college, at the movie theatre within walking distance from where we went to school. Granted, the theatre is on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, hotbed of the kind of people who make up the target demographic, but it was still shocking to see that we weren’t the only ones who got there with much (two hours) to spare, to snag our six seats together in the back of the theatre. The crowd was a sea of twenty and thirty-something New York women and the gay men who love them, and Rachel’s Mom, Shira, Nate, Rachel’s boyfriend, and Andrew, our friend, who proudly represented the straight male sub-group in the crowd of rabid ‘Sex’ fans.

I warn you, Do NOT see this movie in the theatre unless you were a fan of the show. It’s not worth your (in our case, a few days’ advance purchase price of twelve dollars; everything is more expensive in New York) money if you didn’t have investment in the lives of these four women. I can imagine the movie, in its two hours and thirty minutes, would suck your brain into designer vapid-ness unless you actually really cared. I cared, and I was still caught thinking about how many outfits, shoes, accessories and product placement went into the movie.

I’m going to have to see it again, by myself, in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, a few weeks from now. For the present, let me share with you a few likes and dislikes. There will be spoilers, so be sure your girlfriend isn’t reading over your shoulder.

The Men:

STEVE: Sorry, but I’ve never really liked Steve. I know he was written to be this great guy for Type-A-Miranda-The-Harvard-Law-Graduate-Attorney, but there was just something about him that annoyed the living shit out of me during the series. I actually felt badly for him when it was revealed that he and Miranda hadn’t had sex in six months; especially since we had been privy to them having sex, (and a lot of it, as a monogamous couple), during the series. I took my feelings back when he revealed that he had cheated, once, on Miranda. I wished that he would have then faded into the proverbial sunset, but instead, they reconciled through marital counseling, overall forgiveness, and a scene on the Brooklyn Bridge that had one of our straight-male friends weeping. I say…..ok, whatever, Steve.….But sometimes the cheese stands alone.

HARRY: He’s a sweet guy, but don’t expect too much out of him in the movie. Not to sound like an art-school jerk, but if the director gave him ‘objectives’ in which to act, his overall objective in the movie would be “to be really sweet at all times.” Boring, yes, but this has always been a show about the relationships between the four friends.

SMITH: He’s a sweet guy, and gorgeous, but don’t expect to learn anything at all about him other than the fact that he’s now Big In L.A. and has a sweet beachfront mansion in Malibu. He stepped up to the plate the last season of the show in his support for Samantha and her battle with breast cancer. Don’t expect anything else remotely exciting here.

BIG: I Always liked Big over Aidan and The Russian, even if he broke Carrie’s heart (on the series and again, as I discovered, in the movie) and acted like an asshole. (Sorry, feminists everywhere.) Big Problem? (pun intended) How can you expect an audience (mostly female, of course) to be satisfied with a happy ending when two hours earlier, you left your forty-plus-year old, never-been-married intended at the altar (or in this case, the ballroom of the New York Public Library) in bridal couture? Sorry dude, you’ve always had a supporter in me, but WTF? I’m supposed to be psyched when he pulls his head from his ass, when its finally resolved and they have the simple City Hall wedding like they had previously planned? It’s hard to be supportive if, like Carrie said over and over, regarding the day of their wedding, “he couldn’t get out of the car?” To then be ok with the show’s central character getting married, as a happily-ever-after resolve? I’m not ok with this. Please don’t deposit my bare, exposed, backside on fresh cement at the beginning of the film and expect me to still like you at the end.

Things That Caused Me To Raise An Eyebrow:

–What happened to Marcus, Stanford’s Broadway-dancing, Hamptons summer-home co-owning Mensch of a boyfriend? No mention at all. No cameo at all.

–Why did Anthony and Stanford, both bitchy, both obviously not into one another during series, share an awkward New Year’s kiss?

–Who is Jennifer Hudson’s Agent/Manager/Publicist/Personal Fairy-Godmother/Guardian Angel, and how did this person guide Hudson, who looked like she was reading her lines off a teleprompter next to the camera, into a role with so much screen-time next to Sarah Jessica Parker?

–Where was the “Carrie” necklace that had so many scenes in the series?

Things That Made Me Happy The Movie Was Made:

–Charlotte ran away with the film. She, quite literally, poops her pants in Mexico, tells Big off in grand style, and provides the ‘Lioness Protecting Her Cub’ facial expression and loving arms for Carrie when jilted by Big. Way to work it, Kristin Davis.

–Carrie Bradshaw started the series a writer, and ended the series a writer. She provided her signature fly-on-the-wall narrative of her life and the life of her friends. She sat in front of her laptop. She published books. She stayed Carrie.

–Though a total bummer of a “New Years Sadness/Happiness Montage With God-Awful Cover of Auld Lane Syne in the background” we got to see Miranda alone with Chinese food. It brought me back to the gems of scenes in the series when, though cross-town, Miranda and Carrie would share profound phone conversations before bedtime.

–Seeing Samantha stand up for the woman/slut/fierce bitch that she is, in L.A., in New York, in Mexico. We see that she fought breast cancer and came out swinging, and the girls finally revealed/acknowledged her age on the show. (Samantha is 50, in case you were thrown by all the frame-by-frame airbrushing for all four women)

This was a nostalgic two hours and thirty minutes. Though I laughed aloud quite a bit, it was not as funny as it could have been, and heavier, perhaps, than it should have been. This is not Academy-Award winning art, but instead a mark of the end of an era of over-the-top fashion, frankness of sexual encounters and interpersonal relationships between four strong, intelligent women living in the wonderful metropolis of New York City. Carpe Diem.

And now here is our very own Eric Diaz (who you may all know forum-style as Eric AD) with his review of this powerhouse that puts the “jugs” back into the words Box Office Juggernaut. Use the comments below to answer truthfully: Which Sex & The City girl would you go for? You know I’m a coug man so Kim Cattral is in. And the other one (Kristen Davis) that’s not Kerri or the Red Head is cool in my book too. Here’s Eric’s impressions:

For tons of men all over the world, the likes of Iron Man and Indiana Jones were the most anticipated movies of the summer season, but for millions of women and gay men like myself, tt was Sex and the City: The Movie that we were counting down to ( OK, I was counting down to it quite a bit less than the super hero popcorn flicks…I guess even for me, Geek trumps Gay. But it was close! ) For those few who don’t know, the show was about four women in their thirties and forties in Manhattan and their various sexual and romantic adventures. There’s nympho forty – ish ad exec Samantha Jones, ( Kim Cattral ) acerbic lawyer Miranda Hobbs ( Cynthia Nixon ), prudish Charlotte York, ( Kristen Davis ) and at the center of it all, sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw played by Sarah Jessica Parker.

Much of the show’s drama unfolded around Carrie’s on again/ off again relationship with the elusive “Mr Big” played by Chris Noth, as well as several other men in between. When Sex premiered on HBO back in 1998, there had never been anything like it before. Here were women who talked about sex the same way men do, who were accomplished and witty and not just the sidearm to the male characters. Single urban women all over the country embraced the show as theirs, and gay men realized that at least on occasion, some of these women were really gay men in disguise ( no doubt because the show’s creator and at least two head writers were gay, including future comic book scribe Allan Heinberg ) the show was an instant pop culture phenomenon, not just among women and gay guys, but a lot of straight men loved it too, or at least pretended to back when it was the “It” show.

Now however, four years after Sex and the City went off the air, straight men act like it’s the bane of their existence…like watching the show will make their dicks fall off or something. It’s lumped in with “chick shows” like the stuff they show on the Lifetime Network. But I don’t think any of those shows ever had women talk about whether or not they should make their man take wheat grass shots to make their semen taste better. Or whether or not they should shave their pussies into cute little shapes to please their fellas, or the politics of letting someone pee on you in the shower. I’ve always detected the stench of misogyny whenever a guy greatly dislikes this show, as if women can only be sexual if A: Men are the ones doing the sexualizing or B: The women are ridiculously hot in a non real way and under the age of 25. How any guy could dislike a show that encouraged a whole generation of girls to casual sex is beyond me. Of course, I will give some men the benefit of the doubt if their only exposure to the show has been in it’s greatly neutered syndication run. Every time I chance upon a rerun of the show on TBS or something I cringe. It reminds me of the TV edits of The Breakfast Club when I was a kid, and I get flashbacks to Judd Nelson yelling “Fail You!” instead of just saying “Fuck You” to the Principal. What’s the point? The crassness is a great part of the show’s charm…without it, it’s not really the same show.

But as much as I love the show, I have to admit I kind of hated how the series ended. For all the ridiculousness of the sexcapades on the show, it actually was pretty realistic in it’s portrayal of relationships. So when the notoriously non committal and frankly kind of selfish “Mr. Big” suddenly decides to change his ways and sweep Carrie Bradshaw off her feet in a fairy tale ending….I secretly hated it. All the women of America gushed, bet as a viewer I kind of felt betrayed. Whatever it might have been, Sex and the City never fed their viewers that kind of bullshit before. After spending six years telling their mostly female audience that it’s ok to be single, even if your are in your thirties, and not to settle for some asshole just in an effort not to be alone, the show kind of betrayed it’s own premise.

So I was prepared for the worst when they announced the movie. The trailer didn’t help either; it looked sappy and hokey, and worst of all neutered, as if it was trying to cater to all the fans that only discovered the show via it’s virtually sex-less syndication run ( In other words: Your Mom ) Not to mention, reunions are more often than not at least somewhat disappointing, missing that certain something that the ensemble had before. Sure, I missed the girls, but thanks to the magic of DVD, they had never really gone away for me. Did I, or the world, really need a Sex and the City Movie??

Well, no…probably not. But I’m sure glad we got one anyway. Sex and the City is not a great film, or really even a film in the traditional sense. It’s essentially 4 or 5 episodes strung along to a 2 1/2 hour running time. Nothing is structurally changed from the way the show was written or shot or acted, except maybe the title credits. But while Sex may not have been a great film, what it was was the Series Finale I wanted four years ago and didn’t get. Instead of everything being tied up in a nice convenient bow at the end, the movie actually shows that fairy tale endings are indeed bullshit…but that doesn’t mean that the ending has to be an unhappy one either. The ensemble never misses a beat, and their chemistry is there like it was just yesterday that the show wrapped. The one fear I did have however, that the big screen version proved to be a more neutered version of the show proved to be totally true. There was very little Sex in this particular City, even from stalwart Samantha, who you could always count on for at least one raunchy scene. Or three. And the addition of Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson to the ensemble as Carrie’s new assistant is kind of pointless. She’s not around long enough in the movie to really become “one of the girls” and her whole role could have been easily filled by say, Charlotte, who had the least amount of screen time of the four women. And while the TV show was famous for name dropping labels, the move takes it to a whole new level. But whatever, these are really minor quibbles for me. It was great to see the girls again, and if this is the last time we see the four of them together, then I’m ok with that. I think it’s best to go out leaving people wanting more, and that’s just what Sex and the City does so well.

Carnivorous Cannabis: Finding The Ruins

by HongConnerChe

Warning! The following review contains spoilers! Read at your own risk! Go see the movie at your own peril!

“This doesn’t happen! Four Americans on vacation do not just disappear!” This was the line that was spoken by the lead character, Jeff, that sums up the secret message of Hollywood’s latest horror outing – “DON’T LEAVE AMERICA! You are much too hot, rich and white! Foreigners will kill you!”

 

 

This, of course, is not an original sentiment. With movies like Hostel, Turistas, Primeval, The Abandoned, and Brokedown Palace, Hollywood has been feeding our country’s xenophobia with a brand of fear that makes the average white person want to stay in their own backyard for the rest of their lives. The Ruins is no different. It has all the usual trappings of the modern horror movie: impossibly attractive, vapid teenagers on vacation and scary people with different accents, language and/or skin tone. The film does have one point of originality though, and that is the killer ganja that needs the nourishment of human flesh. You heard me.

 

Two young couples, who you would rather see lounge around naked by a pool instead of speak, befriend a German guy who is going to meet up with his brother at a nearby pyramid discovery. Sign #1 that trouble is about to happen: If you meet up with someone that has a different accent than you, they will lead you to trouble. They might not want to kill you, but they just might plant drugs on you, in which case you’ll end up in a Chinese prison. The two couples are Amy (Jena Malone) who is a slut and Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) who is a med student, Stacy (Laura Ramsey) who is not a slut and Eric (Shawn Ashmore) who has a t-shirt with a bull’s eye on it. You can pretty much guess how Eric is going to end up.

 

After some Jena Malone bikini action and some Laura Ramsey nudity for no reason, they decide to go with the German named Mathias (Joe Anderson) and his Greek friend Dimitri (Dimitri Baves) to The Ruins. Sign #2: the taxi driver doesn’t want to go there. Even after being bribed, he drives there but does not want to stay. A lesson to all – listen to taxi drivers, they value their own life above all. Ok. They value money above all, but their own life is a CLOSE second.

 

 

In the jungle, they run into two dark, little children who remain silent when spoken to. This is Sign #3: children that just stare at you blankly are always trouble.

They come upon a large pyramid that is over grown with pot, a true hippie’s delight. Three natives ride in on horses brandishing pistols, bows and arrows. They scream at the group in a native language. This is Sign #4: if Juan Valdez and his merry men show up with weapons, why are you not already running?

 

After missing all the signs on the road map to pain, I no longer have any sympathy for these people. As far as I’m concerned, they asked for it. An unwritten law of horror movies is that the darkest person in the group is the first to go. They have no black people in this movie, so you can pretty much say goodbye, Dimitri. You didn’t really have anything to say, and you served the purpose of being racially challenged.

 

There is another unwritten law in horror: the weakest one shall survive. This usually means the one who is most injured or the most annoying. In this movie they went with most annoying.

 

Amidst all of this, there are plants that kill and mimic sounds that, although creepy, couldn’t help but make me think of Alice in Wonderland. If the Cheshire Cat showed up it would have been so much better.

This movie was just okay. I didn’t hate it, but it doesn’t try to be more than what the trailer already gives us. The killer pipe weed was a bit interesting, but the creators of The Ruins didn’t go far enough in explaining the plants or their relationship to the evil natives.

 

I do have to give Hollywood some credit that this at least wasn’t another remake. It was, however, an adaptation of a book, so that still reinforces the fact that Hollywood has completely run out of ideas. I would have preferred to see the archeologist’s earlier unseen encounter instead of the stock teenage characters. Why can’t these stories have characters that are intelligent and have set pieces that have actual back-stories?

At another time in Hollywood history these movies would have been different. They would have probably starred Karen Black and James Brolin. In the golden age of horror movies, these stories would have been about adults discovering, and then overcoming, obstacles. Now all we are allowed to see are attractive teenagers that have nothing to say other than how their own ignorance will be their inevitable undoing. And of course, there is the most valuable lesson: every white person in America should just stay where they are. Forever.