Test Blog

For how big of a film this one was, It definitely fell under my radar.  I see pretty much every CGI movie in the theaters.  This is one of the few that I somehow managed to miss completely.  Luckily Toy Story 3 on Blu-ray(Is that supposed to be capitalized?) didn't disappoint in the slightest! Andy has grown up, and unfortunately for our favorite cast of misfit toys, this means the end of their fun loving careers.  Now before you jump up and shout "GOD DAMN IT PIXAR WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO BE SO SAD!", this one manages to surprise you by being light in the drama.  A mixup has the entire crew being tossed into a trash bag and donated to a nearby day care where they meet a whole mess of new toys; including a giant "friendly" pink teddy-bear.  I bet you can guess who the villain of the story is.  The animation has really improved dramatically.  Facial features and general flow of the characters is top notch.  I watched the first one immedi...

Zombie movies are a dime a dozen.  They take place in just about every setting, from New York, to giant under ground laboratories.  Survival of the Dead doesn't veer off from that heavily paved path. It sticks to it's roots like some kind of industrial super glue. The story is simple.  An island off the coast of Delaware is home to two feuding families.  With the sudden rise in undead pests, they end up squaring off on what the correct moral choice is in dealing with the situation.  One side says they can be saved, and chaining them  up until a cure is found is the correct course of action, while the other wants to wipe them out before more appear.  Unfortunately, the leader of choice number two is voted off the island, and you can probably imagine what happens next. That's a pretty deep situation isn't it?  Would you follow the norm and wipe out the zombies?  Or would you keep them as pets?  I happen to be an expert in this very lik...

When I first saw this movie sitting in our pre-street box, my first reaction was "oh boy.. another chick flick to fake knowing something about, how exciting!".  And for the past month or so I have done just that with the typical, "eh.. its kind of slow... why not try (insert chick flick #100 that everyone is recommending) instead?"  Well I finally sucked it up and watched it and was pleasantly surprised that "The Joneses" is in fact, not at all, a chick flick. The movie is about a family, but they are not actually related in any way.  They are employees in a company that sends out groups of trendsetters for stealth marketing.  Their job is to start fads up in their specific age groups, be it golfing in the middle aged male section, or the lipstick and perfume of the teenage girl demographic. It's rare to find a movie that is just so.. original.  It's awesome how they go about their daily fake lives, silently hinting at different products and se...

We have a section in the store of movies that usually aren't very good.  They defy the normal rule of "If it has a blu-ray version, chances are it's high budget!".  This same section is home to exemplary movies like "The Chosen One".  Dorian Gray was in this general area for a good month or two, and I never really had the urge to give it a shot.  After hearing several good reviews on it though from various customers, I decided to throw caution to the wind and rent it. The story takes place during the good old Victorian era of London, where according to just about every movie that takes place there, is completely infested with all sorts of nasty devils, vampires, and werewolves.  This movie is no exception.  Naive young Dorian Gray becomes friends with the legendary womanizer Henry Wotton, who transforms him from innocent 20something year old to party animal in a little less than a week.  Dorian commissions a painter to create a self portrait, and s...

This one was pretty low on my list.  It's been sitting there for a while, and I keep hearing how awesome it is, so I grabbed it.  For a kids movie, it was actually pretty entertaining.  I just wish my middle school days were as eventful as this movie, I might remember them if that was the case.  Diary of a Wimpy Kid is the story of a kid who is taking the big step from grade school to junior high.  In this transition, he is hoping to change his persona from unpopular and unknown, to top of the class and king of the yearbook.  Unfortunately, his plans for becoming top dog fail completely, and he ends up hitting rock bottom while his fat immature friend that he was attempting to "fix" takes his place at the pinnacle of school fame. This movie is actually pretty funny, even though most of the jokes are elementary nonsense.  Usually these kid movies have horrible acting, and this one still has some scenes of monologue sounding dialogue, but the majorit...

Phase 4 films sure does pump a lot of movies out.  It's surprising really considering I never heard about them before I started working at Blockbuster.  This is one of their most recent ones to be released at rental stores.  Every once in a while you get an awesome movie from them, but this one was sort of in the middle. In an almost documentary style this film follows the journey of a group of journalists who are visiting the Darfur region of Sudan.  For those stupid Americans like myself, this is over there in Africa.  Apparently, a civil war has been going on over there since 1988; well more like genocide.  The reporters are heading to a small village in the center of the conflict to learn all about what is going on in the middle of what is essentially "hell".  For the first 30 minutes or so, it is primarily them interviewing villagers, as well as a full 5-10 minute clip of general village life which was really overdone.  The rest is just..s...

I actually picked this up hoping it was a horror movie.  There are surprisingly few coming out considering how close it is to Halloween.  It promised "thriller" on the box so I was at least expecting that! But thrills was the exact opposite of what I experienced.  I'm sure it has all sorts of deep underlying themes that I failed to pick up on.  I am no Shakespearean English major though, and this is a blog for the average movie watcher, so I doubt others would find anything either!  Winters Bone is a drama in every sense.  A father ditched his daughter with the responsibility of raising her two siblings and went on the run from the law for cooking crack in his barn out back.  On top of this, he is required for a court date and not showing up means the family loses the house to the law.  So the movie essentially revolves around locating the worlds greatest dad and discovering all sorts of nasty secrets about the nearby drug trade loving yokels....

I have been crazy busy, and ended up with what I thought was pink eye so I skipped Saturday and Sunday of work (meaning I rented 3/10 of my weekly rentals last week).  Luckily it was not pink eye, and I have already stocked 9 new movies to review for the weekend/early next week. Here is what to expect.. 1) The Jonses- No clue on this one! Rollin the dice! 2) Dorian Gray- Looks like a vampire movie? No clue 3) It's Complicated- chick flick of the week 4) Diary of A Whimpy Kid 5) Ironman 2- Yah I know, way late.  But I wanted to do a review of the DVD release and compare it to the theater like I did with How To Train Your Dragon. 6) Attack on Darfur (pre street) Releases next week 7)  Winters Bone (pre street 2) 8) Survival of the Dead 9) Legendary My final rental was Dead Rising 2.  Sorry, I gotta game some time! And on that note I am resubbing my WoW account.  It's probably a terrible idea but I miss having an MMO to grind away in and Minecraft...

Someone needs to fire whoever created this completely unappealing movie cover, I don't think I have ever seen one so boring looking.  I have said it before though, you really can't judge a movie by the cover, and after people kept telling me to check this one out, I sucked it up and did it.  For the record, this is my check flick of the week.  Temple Grandin follows the story of... Temple Grandin.  Why they couldn't think of something clever like "The Rainman" for an autism movie is beyond me, but if they are in the same department as the art team, then it isn't too surprising.  Uglyness aside, the story is actually really interesting.  A girl who was essentially sentenced to uselessness at the age of four, is instead pushed by her mother to go through high school and college like a normal kid.  Temple learns to cope with her mental issues using techniques of her own design, and comes out with an amazing talent for engineering and architecture. ...

I heard horror stories about this one for over a month.  It has been hailed as the worst movie in the store, which is huge when we have over 10,000 movies.  The majority of people I talk to say they don't make it past the 30 minute mark!  I took this as a challenge! "The Chosen One" is about a car salesman who absolutely hates his life.  His wife left him, his job is boring, and his family constantly berates him for everything he does.  The movie starts off with him attempting to burn down his house, and eventually trying to hang himself.  Fortunately for Paul, he fails, and out of nowhere a group of technologically inept holy men from Colombia are knocking at his door calling him The Chosen One. Now normally this would elicit some comedy, which is what the movie was trying to aim for.  I am not sure how you screw up the plot of  "crazy hippies who haven't been out of their cave in a thousand years suddenly finding themselves in the modern wor...

I watch a ton of movies, and the majority of them are forgotten within a week.  I don't know what it is with Pixar and Dreamworks though... they use some cerebral memory adhesive to really make things stick.  How to Train Your Dragon falls into this category.  I actually saw this in I-Max 3D when it came out, which for me, moves even lowly films up a few notches.  For movies like "How to Train Your Dragon", it makes them all the more epic. The story is your typical "boy befriends wild animal" thing we have seen countless times before, but replace wild animal with Dragon (I think that has been done a few times before too...).  It primarily follows Hiccup, a viking wanna-be who in comparison to the rest of his "class" is a mouse being chased around by jaguars.  The clan he lives with is completely anti dragon, and suffer constant raids from a nearby nest of them.  During one raid, he manages to knock the legendary Night Fury out of the sky with a makes...

You know yesterday when I said certain movies are scarier to some than others?  Well this is one of those movies that scared the crap out of me.  Something about crazy undead ghost women stalking people is just straight up creepy.  There isn't much to the story.  A guy named Max gets a job as a night watchmen at his fathers boutique, and as with most horror movies, he has been through a whole mess of psychological trauma.  So naturally, the crazy girl in the mirror trying to kill him is totally a figment of his imagination in everyone else's eyes.  The majority of the movie is Max trying to convince everyone that he is not batshit crazy.  That is pretty much it! But we don't watch horror movies for the story do we?  These movies are here to scare us!  As the title suggests, the majority of the horror in this one is accomplished through the use of mirrors.  It does get a bit old... especially if you have seen a ton of other movies tha...

I am not a huge fan of rating horror movies.  Certain topics are scarier to some people than others, and certain situations (e.g. daytime/night time/crowded room/alone) can increase or decrease the scariness.  "Orphan" for example scared the crap out of some of my friends who think "The Grudge" is the dumbest movie ever; and that is the complete opposite for me.  Dark House is one of those low budget films for the Fangoria Frightfest, and because of this, it is difficult to compare it to the high budget horror movies most people are used to.    The storyline is pretty simple, but still really interesting.  A class of acting students are offered a job to work for the self proclaimed "King of Horror" who builds haunted houses and theme parks around the country.  He buys out an abandoned orphanage in the suburbs of a small town where a mass murder took place, and sets it up as a haunted house with all sorts of special effects built in for hologram monst...

Creepy little girl? Check... Lots of sudden events that make you jump? Check... Completely over the top twist? Yep!  Orphan is a horror movie (kind of)  that falls into the category of "realistic" horror.  This is where poltergeists and demons dare not venture; instead we meet genuinely creepy individuals whos primary goal is to be completely batshit insane, and in doing so, make you think that there just might be people out there that have the same inner thoughts and motives.  Orphan is about a nine year old girl named Esther, who is adopted by a well off couple with two other children.  The wife is currently recovering from some serious depression and alcoholism, so all of her credibility is thrown out the window when the proper, talented little girl they have taken in starts doing disturbing and destructive things around their quiet little abode.  Of course, Esther being the genius that she is, does these things in secrecy, usually framing others. Th...

I guess I accidentally enabled "blogspot members only" in the comment settings when I created the blog.  Sorry all you Anon readers.  Feel free to post away/criticize.  On a side note, I am always looking to improve my writing.  If you see a typo, or something that looks goofy in general, please let me know!  Anon #1 has already taught me the difference between e.g and i.e.

This one has been sitting on the shelf for a while now.  It's another one of those movies that I set aside primarily due to the boring cover (a terrible habit, I know).  Everyone kept telling me to check it out though, so I threw caution to the wind and rented it. "Solitary Man" definitely has an interesting story, and that's about it.  This isn't a bad thing though; the story is done really well.  Unlike most movies that focus 100% on the story (e.g. The Ghost Writer), this one actually keeps you interested.  A famous and successful car dealership owner (Ben) decides to take a massive risk and ends up nearly being thrown in jail, and losing everything.  The story follows his struggles from this point on, and all of the trouble he gets himself into.  Every time Ben nearly breaks free of his slump, he throws it all away again due to his tendencies to sleep with everyone. That is pretty much it... The acting in this movie is top notch, and probably t...

This is another one of those completely unexpected, "don't judge a book by it's cover" movies.  It looks like it is going to be a straight up action movie with gun fights and car chases.  It actually turned out to be more of a drama, with a relatively unique plot. Leaves of Grass follows two twin brothers who have essentially disconnected from one another.  Born and raised in Oklahoma, one chooses a life of higher education and university life (Bill), while the other becomes a weed dealer (Brady).  Now I've never experienced the drug trade firsthand, but I'm pretty sure it's not the best career move, and Brady find that out the hard way.  He borrows 200,000 dollars to build a massive pot greenhouse but fails to pay it back, so he tricks his poor brother into coming back to the state that he absolutely hates and fill in for him twin-style, while he heads to Texas to "deal" with the situation.   Obviously this idiotic scheme doesn't go so wel...

I promised some people I would review at least one chick flick a week, and this just so happened to be the most recent one.  Sometimes these movies surprise me.  It's Complicated for example was pretty hilarious (and Date Night but I have been told that is in fact, not a chick flick).  Please Give didn't promise any comedy though, so I broke completely new ground with this one.  Fortunately it did include a grouchy old person, and nothing is funnier than a grouchy old person.  The story is very simple... almost too simple.  It literally is just the daily lives of a group of people living in an apartment building together.  You have your married couple who run a business on the bottom floor, with a wife who is completely obsessed with saving the world and helping those in need, and a husband who is going through a mid life crisis and sleeping with the hot skin care specialist next door.  The skincare specialist has a grandmother who is nearing de...

Where have I heard this title before...  oh that's right, the 10 other Kung-Fu master movies.  Don't get confused here though, this one isn't a remake of anything.  When a movie comes in, and it has no Blu-Ray counterpart, usually it is considered low budget.  That may sound shallow, but so far it has proven pretty damn true, and this sticks to the formula.  It is essentially kung-fu on steroids mixed with shrooms. In all honesty, it really doesn't have much of a story going for it. It repeats a pattern of : 30 seconds of story, 30 minutes of combat.  Fighting is the main focus here, but be prepared for some serious cornyness. I love kung-fu movies, even the ridiculous ones from the 70's are still some of my favorites.  Right from the get go this film throws all sorts of random junk at you.  The very first fight is some guy in a floating coffin doing what is essentially casket combat.. then right after that we get a team of sharp umbrella user...

I have said it before.. I am not huge on westerns.  I didn't realize it was yet another comic book movie until the "bonus" comic version on the disc popped up.  I honestly skipped it and went right for the movie... never was one for comics. If it can't entertain me without its obscure DC license, then it shouldn't have been made in the first place!  Luckily, Jonah Hex turned out to be a pretty impressive action movie.  The story is probably the weakest part of the movie.  It follows the same formula as every other revenge action movie; father watches his family killed in front of him and pledges his undying loyalty to an endless goal of revenge against the guy that did it.  Unfortunately for Jonah, his mark decides to (supposedly) get himself killed, so the depressed cowboy becomes a hardcore bounty hunter who completely ignores the law and ends up with a nice bounty on his own head.  After finding out from the military that the man he hunted for 1...

Ahh.. Halloween... The magical time where all sorts of horror movies start popping up.  Some are serious business high budget ghost style films with tons of CGI, while others are trashy and ridiculous.  This one falls somewhere in the middle.  Right from the get go, Night at the Demons lets you know that it is not taking itself seriously with its heavy metal rock music and its slutty cat girl costumes.  Sure, its going to try to scare you, but at the same time its going to awe you with massive cleavage and a haunted house style halloween party with tons of drinking and sex all over the place.  When the cops shut down the booze filled extravaganza, things start to (kind of) take a turn for more horror oriented.  Seven young adults find themselves trapped in the house, and "all hell breaks loose" as the movie poster states. This is one of those that you pick up just to laugh at on Halloween.  It throws all sorts of ridiculous stuff at you.  Don'...

Hey all, Happy October! I'm currently watching/reviewing a ton of movies for this week.  Primarily stuff that isn't out until tuesday of next week. Here is the list.. (Not yet released) Jonah Hex (Done) Leaves of Grass Arn: Knight templar (lol?) Please Give (Done) Night of the Demons (Done) Kung-Fu Master (Done) (Released) Harry Brown Solitary Man I will probably throw How To Train Your Dragon in there once it comes in, but I have already seen it in theatres so I might just review it from memory.  I have been trying to avoid this since movie rentals are for TV's, not theatre screens (which I believe is a totally different experience) but I have almost maxed my rentals for the week and we are getting more in soon ;p That does leave 2 slots open for either HTTYD or some suggestions, so feel free to add some you want to see reviewed by me in the comment section of this post. I'm also going to try to add a better "list" of movies (with pict...

I think everyone experiences frustration with laws and regulations at least a few times in their lives.  Our justice system isn't exactly foolproof, hell it has more holes than Swiss cheese that was recently shot by a scattergun.  This movie portrays the most extreme level of failure on the judicial systems part, and one mans quest to fix the wrong that was done to him. The story follows Clyde Shelton, a simple engineer who follows the laws to a T.  Then out of nowhere, a pair of robbers break into his home and kill/rape his wife and daughter... ouch.  Unfortunately for Clyde, he was knocked out during the robbery and not allowed to testify.  On top of this, the forensic investigation was screwed up, and one of the burglars escapes with only a breaking and entering charge.  Clyde is furious, and spends 10 long years cooking up a massive Rube Goldberg machine style revenge plan that is the basis of the entire movie. The acting really sets this one apart....

I have been really busy lately with piles of homework and haven't had a chance to rent anything to watch.  Hopefully I can head over to my store tomorrow and pick up my weekly rentals. Until then, did you know my website was considered an "adult" website due to the word o.rgy?  I've added periods after the o's to fix that in case you were wondering. Anyway see you tomorrow!

I didn't expect much here, but I was still praying for an American pie style movie.  I loved those movies (minus the new ones).  This is far from an American pie though.  It's more of the outhouse behind the motel six on interstate 14 pie. All American O.rgy is about a group of couples who want to spice things up a bit by having their first o.rgy.  Unfortunately these couples don't exactly see eye to eye right from the start, so when they do finally meet up all hell breaks loose.  And by all hell, I mean a pile of really horrible pick up lines and bad acting.  There honestly isn't much more to talk about when it comes to the plot.  That is pretty much the basis of it. I am not sure what category this movie is trying to place itself into.  The cover art screams fun, stupid comedy;  but when you actually watch it , it plays out more like a soap opera. I guess some people could find a likable story in there.  Maybe it's niche is with th...

We only received 3 of these.  It was a mystery to everyone in the store... but only I was brave enough to open the Pandora's box of horror movies.   The back of the box hinted at it being the most grotesque and horrifying film of the decade.  Could it stand up to it's own hype? The movie is about this crazy Japanese-German doctor who decided it would be a great idea to try combining his three dogs into a single triple-dog entity.  Unfortunately,  his new best friend dies and the heartbroken surgeon decides he wants to up the ante on his next project.  He captures two girls and another a poor unsuspecting tourist, and connects their digestional tracts together to form a brand new human centipede! The concept alone should be enough to raise red flags, but this movie really does stretch the boundaries of...boredom.  The idea is completely ridiculous, and difficult to take it seriously.  The acting is awful, especially the two girls who seem ...

I expected something weird with this one, and it definitely didn't disappoint.  In fact, it ranks up there as one of the strangest movies I have seen in the last 10 years. Splice is about a team of scientists (primarily 2 of them) who are on the verge of a major biological breakthrough.  Unfortunately, the company they are working for is also right there ready to cut their funding.  Being the exemplary scientists that they are, they decide to take matters into their own hands and continue their new "human engineering" project in secret.  This eventually leads to the creation of the alien looking creature you see in the movie poster.  "Dren" as they call her is a mix of several different types of (non agressive) creatures, and topped off with human (which is, as most movies tend to point out these days, the epitome of evil).  This movie calls itself a horror movie, but I really didn't see much until the last 20 minutes or so that would constitute frighte...

Now I understand a lot of people obsess over "the classics".  There is no denying that movies from back in the 80's were great.  Every once in a while though, an old series needs a reboot.  Most of these flop; all the others go through what is essentially fanboyism.  The Karate Kid falls into category B.  The majority of reviews are chock full of 20+ year old's nostalgia of the good old days, and because of this, it was critically hated.  I also grew up watching these movies, but luckily my memory is awful.  If you expect this movie to be a carbon copy of karate kid 1, 2, and 3, then you will be sorely disappointed.  It is completely modernized.  I really don't see this as a negative though.  The old movies had their charm, but compared to the fight choreography we have today, the scenes in the old stuff are just downright corny. The current generation (ie the primary audience for this film) has higher expectations. The Kung Fu in this...