This blog covers Movies, TV, and other Geeky things...... Movie Reviews (over 3,400 movies rated so far) Countdowns of my top movies by year.... and much more.
Michael Douglas is a secret agent and Albert Brooks is NOT. Albert Brooks is in typical Albert Brooks mood. He is a master of being paranoid and plays it up as he gets caught up in a bunch of espionage when his daughter is about to marry Michael Douglas's son. This plot puts Albert Brooks in many some great comic situations in this good remake.
I love Albert Brooks and this film is right up his alley allowing him some of his nervous rambling and rants.
Plus throw in a performance by K.C. and the Sunshine band....good stuff.
A U.S. Army Lt. Colonel (played by Joel McCrea) stumbles across some spies while hunting in England. He shoots a man with some buckshot thinking he is a poacher and ended up in the middle of a spy adventure. The movie also stars the infamous Herbert Lom of Pink Panther eye twitching fame. The movie is a decent low key 1950's spy film.
It starts off kind of slow,but eventually speeds up a bit near the end with a staircase gunfight after a clandestine meeting inside a wax museum.
Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor 2008 8 out of 10
Over the top CGI Mummy fun.......
Coming in at number 9
Iron Man 8 out of 10 A pleasant surprise. Robert Downey Jr ended up being the perfect casting choice for the not so humble Tony Stark
Coming in at number 8
Hellboy 2 8 out of 10 Epic Comic book fun
Coming in at number 7
Tinker Bell 2008 8 out of 10 Suprisingly good launch of the direct to DVD Tinker Bell movies. It had heart, a good story, good music and the kids all loved it
Coming in at number 6
Get Smart 2008 8 out of 10
Steve Carrell was perfect as Maxwell Smart is this update of the old TV show....Fun and funny'
Coming in number 5
Horton Hears a Who 8+ out of 10 A delightful adapation of one of Seus's works. With the voice talents of Steve Carrell and Jim Carrey
Coming in at number 4
Outlander 9 out of 10 You have probably never heard of it... I movie with a fairly big budget that pits Vikings versus Aliens that never got a wide release....It was actually pretty good.
Coming in at number 3
Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull 9 out of 10
My least favorite Indy movie: Still good enough for the number 3 spot of 2008
Coming in at number 2
WALL-E 9+ out of 10 Pixar strikes again by bringing a soul to a cute little robot that barely talks. Amazing work.
Coming in at number 1
Clone Wars 9+ out of 10........and the TV show that it came from is just as good
LOST with a Dinosaur.......It came out around the same time that the big budget Will Ferrell Land of the Lost came out --plus the TV show LOST --about being stuck on a strange island was on ABC as well......(Asylum has a habit of doing that....just see Almighty Thor----I mean Don't see Almighty Thor it was terrible)..... My Almighty Thor Review is here
I hate that they are able to put the words Edgar Rice Burrough's The Land That Time Forgot on the box because low budget movies like this and my previously reviewed Jules Verne's Mysterious Island really don't do those classic books justice.
Someone growing up today my be turned off from reading this classic books after watching these cheap low budget versions of them with the names of such classic authors attached. Edgar Rice Burrough's deserves versions like Disney's Tarzan and John Carter rather than films starring (C Thomas Howell). That being said ---at least this direct to DVD movie was watchable unlike the Mysterious Island film that was direct to Syfy earlier this year. Sure it was low budget and they kept shooting scenes in the same 5 shot locations over and over again.....But for an Asylum movie this one was decent in all its cheesy glory.
The Cabin in the Woods fits perfectly into the Whedonverse. It skewers the horror genre and its
conventions in a clever and laugh filled fashion.
Like a really fun episode of Buffy or Angel that goes places that the
show couldn’t. It plays with the classic horror movie genre with
a mysterious quality straight out of the
movie The Cube…. but with Buffy style
laughs. It basically serves as a way of
explaining all of the horror movies that we have seen over the years…..All of
the unexplained decisions that the characters of those horror movies make. It is like if the Scooby Gang went to a
spooky cabin in the woods and left Scooby at home. Shaggy is definitely there in the form of
Fran Kranz (previously from the Dollhouse) playing the geeky stoner Marty.
As a fan of Buffy and Angel I got
exactly what I wanted out of this movie going experience. It meet all of my expectations by creating creepy settings and scary moments and then having great moments of laughter and fun in place of scares. It captured the horror that it is skewering and then cooked the kabobs and added a little extra sauce.
The big supposed twist of the movie is
technically revealed in the first few minutes of the movie and that really
doesn’t matter. It isn’t a movie that
solely relies on a twist at the end like the so-so films of M Knight.
The twist is just a fun original idea that allows us to look at the horror genre in a different way. The thing I like about Joss Whedon’s stuff
is that he teases you and teases you and then pays it off in the end. On Buffy there would be a season long arch
---a mystery behind the season that you would get a hint of –and then another
hint and at the end of the season there would be a payoff and the story would
move forward to something else. Other
shows like Twin Peaks , X-Files and LOST
were masters of the tease (and great at times in their run) but they all failed in the big payoff. You need to eventually payoff the
audience. Whedon does and this movie
does as well. They could have easily
ended the movie and left it open for dozens of sequels with different scenarios
---but instead the movie has a big payoff at the end. And I appreciate it.
A movie with a message about anti-bullying starring Rob Schneider?? The movie itself was just okay the message or heart of the movie was unexpected. Jon Heder---plays an adult nerd that still wears a helmet and for an acting choice he basically just plays the character like Napoleon Dynamite with a helmet (what range). David Spade is basically just nerdier version of his exact same character he always plays with a bad haircut and Nick Swardson is basically wasted as Spade's brother that is afraid of the sun. They all play a bunch of losers that never got picked to play ball back in the day that stand up to a bunch of young bullies that are picking on a kid. This brave action and the help of another former nerd that is now a billionaire (Jon Lovitz) leads them to band together to take on little league teams and get payback. The humor in the movie is pretty average---nothing special or exceptionally funny. The message was actually pretty heartfelt one about anti-bullying which was a bit of a surprise coming from Deuce Bigalow and Joe Dirt. Rob Scheider --who to me is usually a throw away character with a few funny moments in Adam Sandler movies actually does a pretty good job as the main character that isn't exactly what he seems. That plot point was predictable-but worked well anyway. All in all it was a so-so comedy that was only slightly more than I expected it to be.
CGI Snake with multiple heads meets The Most Dangerous Game. If you took the Most Dangerous Game genre in which people hunt other people for sport (Of which the popular Hunger Games is derivative) and stuck it on a mysterious island that just happens to have a mythical Hydra on it then you get Hydra: The Lost Island. A sub par CGI monster movie with really bad dialogue and acting and some typical creature munching. 4 People are released on an island as prey for some rich millionaires who they must flee from while a giant Hydra is loose. They set up a few Rambo/Predator traps, but mainly just run around in the not too expensive forest talking in between Hydra kills. People die....and our hero finds the sword of Hercules in some fake lava inside a cave to slay the beast.....(Spoiler Alert) He doesn't kill it all the first time around just because someone decided they wanted the creature to get loose on the ship at the end. There is nothing special about this typical low budget monster movie.
