the_kissed > Reviews

Set in present day, people have found a new way to live their lives to the fullest — with surrogate robots. The robots are a sexy, physically perfect mechanical representations of themselves. Basically you’re you, only hotter and better at everything that you do. With everyone safe in their homes, free of pain, fear and consequences, the world is a utopia, that is until the first murder occurs and FBI agent Greer (Willis) will have to leave his surrogate behind and risk his life to unravel the mystery. * The Idea Behind the Action: If people really had surrogates it would change the world as we know it, and the movie did attempt to take that all on board in an interesting way. Violence would change, health would change (although I only saw it going the one way- more on this later), war, infidelity (it wasn’t ME!) and more. For an action film, they took a number of these ideas to heart and did a decent job at presenting them in a fun way. * Old Fashioned Effects: A number of extras doing one thing in unison is more effective than someone flying through thin air. In a world where everything is CGI it’s nice to see a couple simple shots that still blow your hair back. Although there are a few scenes which were definitely shot on a green screen and a tennis ball, they used them spraingly and had enough story to keep you entertained and interested between action sequences.

You ever had that dream where on an early Summer morning you step outside of your house, you look in the sky and there is this giant 20ft hotdog plummeting at high velocity towards you and then you get crushed by said hotdog? No? Oh just me then. Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is the latest 3D family movie from Sony Pictures Animation that takes this concept of giant food falling out of the sky and convolutes an entire 90 minute plot out of it. In fact, the origins of this movie comes from the Judi Barret children’s book of the same name back in 1978 but on with the story… The movie opens with young kindergartner whizzkid inventer Flint Lockwood presenting his new device to his classmates during a show-and-tell – spray-on rubber shoes. The class are initally awestruck until the class bully points out a major fault – the shoes are permanently stuck! Throughout the years, adult Flint (an excellent Bill Hader) develops more and more contraptions each with their imperfections causing evermore disapprovement from his technophobe father (as voiced by James Caan) until one day he invents a machine that causes food to fall from the sky. Back to the movie, I would consider Meatballs one of the finest family movies I’ve seen in a while, it entertains the kids but crucially keeps the adults charmed too. Did I mention that I watched this entire movie in 3D?? I mean, these monster pizzas were in my FACE at some points!

Love Happens is a reasonable two-word plot summary for the new Jennifer Aniston/Aaron Eckhart romance, being promoted on the side of a bus near you, but as a title it’s just the pits, like “World Ends”, or “Batman Continues”. It’s not a comedy. It certainly isn’t funny. Eckhart is very much the lead, as a car-crash widower who has buried his grief and become a hugely successful self-help guru as a hypocritical coping mechanism. He’s touring in Seattle with the new book, and bumps into a kooky florist called Eloise (guess who) in the hotel corridor. Her shop is called “Eloise’s Garden”, and she likes to scrawl obscure words with crayons behind hotel picture frames. (“Quidnunc”; “Poppysmic”.) They date. Grief is triggered. Love happens. Aniston gives the constant impression, not particularly of being a kooky florist called Eloise, but of needing a hit, even after her last two films (Marley & Me, He’s Just Not That Into You) did quite well. This is not that hit, because it’s ghoulish claptrap which can’t even decide if Eckhart’s group therapy is a sham or not. One client (John Carroll Lynch, trying his considerable best) wants a refund, understandably dubious that walking over hoat coals will help him come to terms with his son’s death on a building site. In one of the least honest or bearable scenes of the year, he’s talked round into weepy catharsis when everyone clubs together to buy him power tools. Not to be outdone in kookiness, Aniston, in a hat, encourages Eckhart to steal back his dead wife’s parrot from his estranged in-laws and set it free. Yes, there’s a parrot. This is a crucial step. He finally breaks down on stage and everyone claps. Grief, about which Brandon Camp’s film thinks it’s saying wise and important things, is a slow and private process, no? No. Not when film stars need hits and Love is Happening.

Short Version: Zombieland is Shaun of the Dead’s crazy, funny redneck cousin on’t kid yourself going into Zombieland: It is a VERY gory movie. So if based on trailers and commercials you’re expecting just a funny, goofy film, you’ll be in for a surprise. On the other hand if you’re a fan of the zombie movie genre, you’re in for a great time. Zombieland is about a couple of guys trying to get by after the zombie apocalypse. Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) is a shut-in, introverted geek with a fear of clowns and Talahassee is a nothing-to-lose, redneck badass who’s finally discovered his gift in life: Zombie killin’. Oh - and Talahassee’s one burning goal is to find some Twinkies so he can satisfy his burning craving for them. Columbus has managed to survive because even before the zombies took over he didn’t like being around people and was very paranoid. He’s developed a list of rules for surviving in a world overrun by zombies, and the first few are highlighted hysterically in the opening minutes of the film. Among them include Rule #1: Cardio - it goes back to the old joke about not having to outrun the bear, just your buddy. He notes that “fatties” were among the first to go after the zombies took over because they were easy to catch. Other rules include “Beware of bathrooms” (you don’t want to get caught by a zombie while on the toilet) and “Always double-tap” (two gunshots, whacks with a blunt object or blade to be sure the zombie stays down). There are a few additional rules sprinkled throughout (he has over 30) and they’re used to good effect. Then we have Talahassee, who you’ll like immediately - he’s apparently taken the situation in stride, no, strike that - he actually seems to be enjoying it. His favorite thing to do in the world is to kill zombies. He’s travelling in a Cadillac Escalade, armed to the teeth, and you’ll get a kick out of the creativity and gusto he uses when dispatching the undead. Our heroes meet Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin), who have also found unique ways to survive the zombie mayhem. However part of their survival has included not trusting anyone, so things are sketchy between both pairs for quite a while. Eventually they end up in Beverly Hills, where they pick up a “Map of the Star’s Homes” in order to find a certain celebrity’s home where they can relax for a while. There’s a great cameo in the film and I won’t spoil who it is. Soon after the girls head to an amusement park in the LA area so that Little Rock can have at least a little childhood fun, but things take a sour turn, requiring rescue from the boys. As I mentioned in my “Short Version” this is a lot rougher than the only other recent zombie comedy I can think of, Shaun of the Dead. That one had more of that dry, Brit humor and at times was scary than this film (this film really wasn’t scary at all, just gory).

When I was a kid I played in junior league baseball. To be honest, it never really held my interest. While I wasn’t exactly a kid who played just because my dad wanted me to, sports just weren’t my thing. Maybe if we had been total underdogs with a wacky array of characters I would have been more into it. Alas, just another example of life not being like the movies. Of course, in Rebound that might not be a bad thing, since even though it has the screwball characters on an underdog team, it’s just not that interesting. It’s not about baseball (which in my mind is one of the slowest most boring sports out there) but instead focuses on the fast paced world of kid’s basketball. Even a faster paced sport doesn’t help though, as Rebound is so locked into the formula for an underdog kid’s sports movie that you can’t help but feel you’ve seen this movie before, and probably done better than it is here. In Rebound Martin Lawrence plays “Coach Roy”, one of the biggest names in college basketball. Unfortunately for Roy he’s bought into his own hype and spends less time actually coaching his basketball team and more time working on his endorsement deals and garnering technical fouls for yelling at referees. When Roy is ejected from yet another game, he throws a fit and accidentally ends up killing the bird mascot of the opposing team. The college decides they're through with his antics and cans him, but thanks to the fast work of Roy’s PR agent (Breckin Meyer), Roy gets another chance to prove himself with whatever team he can find. In this case the team is from Roy’s old junior high school, a bunch of misfits who wrote to Roy for help as a longshot and just happened to be in the right place at the right time. As a underdog kid’s sports movie, Rebound becomes painfully predictable. You know at first Roy will be a jerk, focused more on saving his career than actually helping the kids, although later he’ll be able to offer wisdom the character never appeared to have to help his team win. You know Roy will eventually find aid for the team in the local bully, who is really kind hearted inside. You know the kid who hasn’t made a shot yet will eventually make the winning basket in the final game, and somewhere in there will be some kind of romance with one of the player’s parents. The plot is so obvious you have no choice but to turn to the acting for the entertainment. Of course, the problem there is that the acting isn’t really good. We have a bunch of colorful characters, but unlike other movies of this type, the focus really isn’t on the kids. Martin Lawrence is the one in the spotlight, though he is almost always at his best when he’s acting against another talented actor. The film's collection of moppet children and B-list television actors aren’t really enough to help out, so the movie just looks like an attempt by Lawrence to convince the audience that the talents that gave him a successful television show should earn him a movie career as well. As in his old tv show, Lawrence even has a brief appearance as a second character in the movie to show his versatility, but since the appearance is so brief, and the character is completely unneeded, it’s a wasted attempt, just like most of the movie. Instead Lawrence slurs his way through the role like a man who needed alcohol to make it through each day stuck with these kids. If that’s the case, he should admit it in an interview somewhere so the audience doesn’t feel guilty using alcohol to make it through his movie. Rebound is little more than the newest entry in a long line of underdog children’s sports movies, a genre that is beginning to feel less and less like an actual genre, and more like the exact same movie remade over and over again. In fact, my screening for Rebound included the trailer for the upcoming Bad News Bears remake which features the same tired plot devices and motley assortment of characters, proving there’s no need for creativity in these kinds of films. Along with the Bears remake, Rebound is one of three underdog kid’s sports movies to come out this summer, and it doesn’t offer much, other than a kid-friendly movie on the marquee to draw attention as a family film. It’s summer time. Skip this one and go play some real sports with your kids in the park. No doubt, your family is just as colorful, and less painfully predictable to be around than this movie.

When I was a kid I played in junior league baseball. To be honest, it never really held my interest. While I wasn’t exactly a kid who played just because my dad wanted me to, sports just weren’t my thing. Maybe if we had been total underdogs with a wacky array of characters I would have been more into it. Alas, just another example of life not being like the movies. Of course, in Rebound that might not be a bad thing, since even though it has the screwball characters on an underdog team, it’s just not that interesting. It’s not about baseball (which in my mind is one of the slowest most boring sports out there) but instead focuses on the fast paced world of kid’s basketball. Even a faster paced sport doesn’t help though, as Rebound is so locked into the formula for an underdog kid’s sports movie that you can’t help but feel you’ve seen this movie before, and probably done better than it is here. In Rebound Martin Lawrence plays “Coach Roy”, one of the biggest names in college basketball. Unfortunately for Roy he’s bought into his own hype and spends less time actually coaching his basketball team and more time working on his endorsement deals and garnering technical fouls for yelling at referees. When Roy is ejected from yet another game, he throws a fit and accidentally ends up killing the bird mascot of the opposing team. The college decides they're through with his antics and cans him, but thanks to the fast work of Roy’s PR agent (Breckin Meyer), Roy gets another chance to prove himself with whatever team he can find. In this case the team is from Roy’s old junior high school, a bunch of misfits who wrote to Roy for help as a longshot and just happened to be in the right place at the right time. As a underdog kid’s sports movie, Rebound becomes painfully predictable. You know at first Roy will be a jerk, focused more on saving his career than actually helping the kids, although later he’ll be able to offer wisdom the character never appeared to have to help his team win. You know Roy will eventually find aid for the team in the local bully, who is really kind hearted inside. You know the kid who hasn’t made a shot yet will eventually make the winning basket in the final game, and somewhere in there will be some kind of romance with one of the player’s parents. The plot is so obvious you have no choice but to turn to the acting for the entertainment. Of course, the problem there is that the acting isn’t really good. We have a bunch of colorful characters, but unlike other movies of this type, the focus really isn’t on the kids. Martin Lawrence is the one in the spotlight, though he is almost always at his best when he’s acting against another talented actor. The film's collection of moppet children and B-list television actors aren’t really enough to help out, so the movie just looks like an attempt by Lawrence to convince the audience that the talents that gave him a successful television show should earn him a movie career as well. As in his old tv show, Lawrence even has a brief appearance as a second character in the movie to show his versatility, but since the appearance is so brief, and the character is completely unneeded, it’s a wasted attempt, just like most of the movie. Instead Lawrence slurs his way through the role like a man who needed alcohol to make it through each day stuck with these kids. If that’s the case, he should admit it in an interview somewhere so the audience doesn’t feel guilty using alcohol to make it through his movie. Rebound is little more than the newest entry in a long line of underdog children’s sports movies, a genre that is beginning to feel less and less like an actual genre, and more like the exact same movie remade over and over again. In fact, my screening for Rebound included the trailer for the upcoming Bad News Bears remake which features the same tired plot devices and motley assortment of characters, proving there’s no need for creativity in these kinds of films. Along with the Bears remake, Rebound is one of three underdog kid’s sports movies to come out this summer, and it doesn’t offer much, other than a kid-friendly movie on the marquee to draw attention as a family film. It’s summer time. Skip this one and go play some real sports with your kids in the park. No doubt, your family is just as colorful, and less painfully predictable to be around than this movie.

Judd Apatow’s Funny People feels like an attempt to graft the writer/director/producer’s patented brand of semi-raunchy character comedy of latent male adolescence on to the template of a certain kind of studio film rarely made today — think 1980s Oscar bait, like Terms of Endearment, The Accidental Tourist or even Beaches: the gently melancholic dramedy in which someone in early middle age is suddenly forced to reconcile their lives. This unlikely hybrid serves as the vehicle for a meta-epic work of autobiography that pays tribute to one of the writer/director’s oldest friends/collaborators, diverges into a love letter to his wife, contrives to get the wife and the friend in bed together, and then drags in Eric Bana to get them out. All the while, Seth Rogen is milling about, mostly as a surrogate for the filmmaker, until he suddenly switches over and starts speaking for the audience — during the film’s draggiest stretch, he is very vocal about not wanting to be there. If this sounds bizarre, it is. What’s more bizarre is that this mix of personal project-as-product actually succeeds — at least intermittently. Though not formally bifurcated, Funny People practically plays out in two sections (another 80s flashback: it feels like the kind of film that used to come packaged on two VHS tapes). It peaks emotionally at about three-quarters of the way into the first section, makes good on track laid in that scene about a third of the way into the second section, and then rapidly devolves from there into a domestic sitcom that can only resolve itself in a “girls may come and go, but bromance is forever” fade out. The film is so self-referential, so quick to pounce on and twist what the audience thinks it knows about Apatow and his players (from multiple references to Seth Rogen having recently lost a lot of weight to Adam Sandler repeatedly begging Rogen to show him his dick) that to reaffirm the bond between two men this way almost seems like an act of defiance. “Yes,” Apatow seems to be saying. “This is a movie about me, and yes, my primary concern as an artist is platonic male love. So … suck it.” By the time that statement arrives in the 146th minute, it’s almost redundant. Very litle attempt has been made to veil the correspondence between Funny People’s narrative beats and Judd Apatow’s actual life history. Adam Sandler plays George Simmons, a stand-up comedian-turned-movie star best known for a number of blockbuster comedies that involve him playing high-concept characters mainly of interest to kids (though there seems to be little narrative resemblance between Simmons’ Merman and Sandler’s The Waterboy, the vocal performance of the two titular characters is pretty much the same). After he learns he has a rare, fatal disease with an eight percent survival rate, a depressed George shows up at a comedy club to do an impromptu set about mortality. He bombs, and is followed by Ira (Rogen), a young comic who makes up for his own lack of material by pouncing on Simmons’ performance. The next day, George calls Ira at the apartment he shares with his more successful friends (played by Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman; Apatow became roommates with Sandler in the late 80s after meeting him at a comedy club). George offers Ira a job writing jokes (Apatow wrote jokes for superstar comedians such as Roseanne Barr before breaking into TV and film), and soon Ira is showing up daily at George’s ridiculously large, ornate, empty mansion. George is a prickly, permanently single, co-dependent loner who soon sucks Ira into his life nearly full-time, leaving the young comedian as the primary witness to this movie star stranger’s deterioration. Eventually Ira convinces his boss to tell his friends about his disease, and though he insists that he has none (“Andy Dick is not a friend”), soon faces from his past, mostly other comedians, start hanging out. By this point, the film has made so many nods to Sunset Boulevard (Gloria Swanson had Buster Keaton and Anna Q Nilsson as wax works, Adam Sandler has Norm Macdonald and Colin Quinn) that it’s surprising when the film suddenly breaks through the hermetic seal of George’s depressingly one-track life, and starts to explore his unending regret over losing his one true love, an actress named Laura who gave up her career before breaking out as a star to have a family with another man (Bana). Laura is played by Apatow’s real-life wife Leslie Mann, whose actual pre-motherhood career is sampled here as Laura’s “acting reel”, and whose real-life daughters make their second appearance after Knocked Up as her daughters on screen. After George and Laura share what is — as far as I remember — the first genuinely tear-jerking scene in Apatow’s canon (involving what is certainly the most humanesque acting work Sandler has ever committed to screen), the film takes an even more abrupt shift: breaking out of George’s house, jumping ship from what seemed like its reason to exist, and suddenly becoming an adultery farce. Funny People feels like two films stitched together, in a manner reminiscent of a messy epic like Reds. The second half of Apatow’s film — like the back end relegated to the second VHS tape of Warren Beatty’s — couldn’t exist without the first half, but it carries on with a completely new set of stakes, a completely separate emotional arc.