Movies that Suck

things on the back of the case

I just got the Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray. The rating on the back says rated R, for “Vampire violence, gore, and sexuality.” hahahahah, I guess that’s as opposed to “regular violence?” That’s so awesome. They might as well have added “Vampire sexuality.” 

“Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” sucked :(

So I’ll just get to it. 

Pointlessnesses:

1. The Russian cop who just keeps getting his ass kicked. He was more of Tom Cruise’s “Cato”, jumping in at random times to give the old agent a workout. 
2. The romance interest guy with the awesome voice who gets killed by the hot blonde 5 minutes in. He got dead so fast, what was the point? I guess he sets up the vengeance motivation for the hot brunette agent, Jane Carter. 
3. The hot brunette agent’s vengeance motivation. What was with the tears and pain and bullshit? What? So she and awesome voice guy had a thing? Couples’ espionage?! In all my years of being a spy one thing I’ve noticed is couples going on missions together is stupid and turns awesome action into stupid. Another I’ve realized is that comrades die! It sucks but I deal with it and I complete the mission! Secret agents don’t work off of cheap vengeance plots!!! They kill bad guys cuz they like it!! That’s your motivation!
4. Dubai; all the locations. It was so random. It felt like an expedia commercial. If you’re going to sell Dubai in a movie sneak it in a little better. Dubai could have been replaced by any place in the world with tall buildings. It had no specific meaning to the story.
5. The whole “what me? I have do something dangerous?” attitude. Dammit Agent hunt! Didn’t you see the last 3 movies? When that helicopter chased you down while you rode the outside of a high speed train and psychotic bad guy shooting at you (all in a tunnel) and the fate of the world in your hands, you didn’t even have ”blue is glue!”
6. Jeremy Renner’s character and back story did nothing for the overall story either, except set up Michelle Monoghan’s brief cameo.
7. Michelle Monoghan. She wasn’t even credited! They didn’t even find her relevant!
8. Anil Kapoor. Why? His scene doesn’t get her naked even though that’s what half the audience wants to happen, and Kapoor’s character goes back to whence he came: nowhere! 

There’s a bunch more stuff that could have been taken out of the movie, mainly all the character’s little stupid subplots. If they focused on the mission (like real spies do) then it would have been pretty cool. It seems like in order to move the story forward they would add a character and use them to inject a plot point. Some of these points were irrelevant, and the ones that were necessary could have been added by using the existing characters and thus further developing them, further strengthening the story, keeping it focused instead of diluting it with the many briefly-shown tools of characters—such as those of Renner, Kapoor, Monoghan, the Russian cop (Vladimir Mashkov), and awesome voice guy (Josh Holloway).

The idea of having spies have to improvise and rely on fast thinking and somehow, just barely, making it out alive in situations they have never before faced is a really cool idea. It worked (somewhat) for the Bourne Trilogy and it worked in the story that Ghost Protocol nearly perfectly resembles (if you remove all the crap): Modern Warfare 2. I love intellectual films as much as the next person who thinks too much, but I have to admit that the MW2 story is freakin’ awesome! 

And why, in this age of counterterrorism, was the U.S. the #1 suspect of the Kremlin bombings? Couldn’t have been pre-protest anti-Putin anarchists? 

lol. jk. I love the protest. TIME Person of the Year! maybe it would have been cool for Ghost Protocol to randomly go to where the insurrections were breaking out, kinda like Dark Knight: Rising. lol

“The Green Hornet”

Just to be straight with y’all, I’m just glad the projector broke down just before the movie ended.

Yeah, the movie was pretty terrible. I could swear I could see Christopher Waltz’s eyes rolling in some scenes. And to answer his reoccurring question “no, I don’t find you scary, unfortunately, I don’t find you that funny either.” In addition, Kato’s kick-the-guy-through-the-window-move gets kinda old around the 7th or 8th kick. Michel Gondry, what did you do?! You’re so awesome! Why’d your movie suck? Was a shit Nazi following you around again?

So, thankfully I got a reimbursement ticket to watch something else to make up for the projector giving up on the film. Maybe I’ll go watch Twilight and see how long the equipment lasts then. 

“The Life of David Gale”

Come on Kevin Spacey! You’re an awesome actor but you kinda suck playing a dad.

Come on Kate Winslet! You’re the man! Stop cryin’ for no reason!

Come on Laura Linney! You were awesome in The Truman Show…..well, The Life of David Gale wasn’t really you’re fault; you’re an awesome actress, you too Spacey, and Kate Winslet. I think we all know whose fault it is….Parker.

Come on Alan Parker, your movie sucked.

To sum it all up real quick: Kate Winslett inexplicably goes from hardline, ultra liberal, fast talka New Yorka, reporter TO cry-ey face, sympathetic, “omg I’m so sad for you” blondy in a matter of one cut…LITERALLY! We see her, she’s tough, cut, she’s on the verge of tears…..?

THEN, Kevin Spacey played a really great pedofile/wierdo who doesn’t like being around kids, unfortunately his character is a father. His contorted face and awkwardly pointing fingers say it all when conjoined with the fatherly loving lines of “okey dokey artichoke” (which in themselves were delivered with the kind of discomfort seen in constipation patients).

THEN, THEN, THAT TRANSITION! with the papers, and the hard sounds which have some kinda distorted melody to them, and completely cut the mood of the scene, and occurred with such frequency that I could actually (with great disdain as I braced myself for impact) predict coming! yeah, didn’t like those. Terrible way of moving the story forward, especially being that this is a murder mystery wherein in the story structure should feel continuous, thus building, thus increasing tension instead of cutting it with an annoying lack of creativity.

Kevin Spacey drunk. First off, Bernie from the Simpsons plays a more realistic and convincing drunk, and he’s yellow. And again, this scene is another uncreative way of getting a point across, except in this case it was thematic as opposed to structural: the drunkeness was the only way they could figure out to directly proclaim an intellectual backing to the story (by which I mean parallel between the demises of David Gale and Socrates). But if you think about it, its sad that it takes a drunk scene proclaim intellectualism, and more so when it is so clumsily spewed out without any kind of prompt besides the fact that filmmakers felt the audience needed to hear this. Kevin Spacey might as well have been vomitting in that scene, because then at least it would have some sort of symbolism involved, and thereby retain at least a bit of intelligent technique.

AND FINALLY, this movie just sucked. I liked the scene where Laura Linney is confiding in Kevin Spacey, and then they have sex, because it was one scene where the performances and dialogue didn’t seem so overly concerned with moving the plot or promoting some sort of theme. They acted very genuinely, Spacey didn’t seem so constipated, Linney wasn’t so overly and unconvincingly “passionate” about saving the lives of state’s worst criminals, and there was a bit of drama that came straight out of the character’s emotions instead of out of what the emotions and behaviors the scene was calling for.

AND FINALLY, FINALLY, I meant to end it in that last paragraph but I’ll end it now with this: those criticism on the cover are funny. XD

“Nightmare on Elm Street” was so bad, it might as well be a nightmare

Wow. This movie was freakin bad. I think about it, and I wonder why I don’t just make the moviesthatsuck.tumblr.com blog all about Micheal Bay. Lets face it, he knows nothing about the artistry of filmic storytelling.

Lets start from the very beginning. BOOM, Freddy’s freaky looking hand pops up on screen…..mistake number one.

When the camera is behind a character, it causes audiences to identify with them. To be frightened of someone, you’re not supposed to identify with them! You’re not even supposed to think of them someone. Freddy’s scary because he’s a thing…a nightmare, not some guy who you can stand behind and watch him go to work. Fear in film is a matter of identifying with the victim! You’re supposed to tremble with them facing the thing they can’t understand.

Ok, so that’s in the first 2 minutes of the film, just to give a little preview how excellent the rest is going to be.

You know what, I’m not even going to go totally into it, because this blog will end up being a 200 page dissertation. I’ll just mention that really stupid scene where the female protagonist (don’t remember her name, sorry Mike) looks up that Asian guy who had the same Freddy problem, then does his darndest to act scared and panicked and depressed—even though the bluntly stupid scenes around his own don’t help build up any overall tension to underlie his performance—and he finally dies in that little webcam screen which is somehow supposed to be dramatic……uhhhhh [disgruntled sigh gratuitous to the fact that I didn’t pay to watch it ;) ].

So, to wrap up, the movie drops in and out of tension scenes more frequently than a porno in and out of sex scenes. In being so frequent, none of these scenes are effectively built up; they’re just flat and bland. This normally isn’t that bad if you use effective surprises, but Micheal Bay uses cheap shocks that I think were thrown in because test audiences kept falling asleep…don’t know how effective they were though because they weren’t scary and come in about every 2 minutes on the minute like clock work. I swear you can pretty much keep track of the passage of wasted time on the consistency of these periodic and weak attempts to surprise audiences.

Sorry, now I’m wrapping up: the way they killed Freddy was kinda cool. The little kids in the school scene I guess were kinda scary but its such and old and cliche technique. The photography, as in many a Bay movie, was nice, especially the supermarket scene. The movie was horrible, it wasn’t a scary movie, and the only time I at all enjoyed anything about it was when the Sarah Palin surrogate/stereotypical-Hollywood-over-intervening-suburban-mom was brutally murdered.

I liked that part for 2 reasons: I hated her (so there you go Bay, a drop of props for you, you made me feel something to at least one of your characters), AND the movie was FINALLY OVER….UHHHHHH  [disgruntled sigh losing faith in humanity and film and Spielberg for producing this douche and mentally cursing out Micheal Bay and hatin’ cuz he has more money than me even though he’s a douche and my dog could make a better movie…and his favorite color is probably a stupid one…and I would love to see him try to hold an intellectual conversation with like Martin Scorsese, or better yet, I would love to have intellectual conversation with him, wherein I have some intellectual words to shoot at him like….asshole!….. and……….douche!…..]

“Independence Day” sucked, yes it did

Here’s the thing about Independence Day, I go up to my esteemed co-cine-phile film scholars, a demographic of friends who deeply enjoy pensively analyzing complex films like Citizen Kane or Darjeeling Limited or crazy deep shit like that, and in trying to stir up a fun rantin’ I ask them “what’dju think of Independence Day?” all the while knowing their going to side with me; HOWEVER, to my great surprise they for some reason say something along the lines of “I liked it”

!

I apparently am a lonely part of some small underground group of people that do not like Independence Day, other members of which I have yet to find. If you are reading this and you think Independence Day sucked, contact me some how cuz I feel like a lonely loser :(……but im proud!

Anyways, let me outline the guidelines of our little Anti-Independence Day clan:

First Clause: the Characters are totally unbelievable to the point that its annoying

  Now I’m not in the airforce, but if I was, and I saw this movie, I would be like “hey!” 

According to this film, the pilots of the United States Air Force are a bunch of frat boys, who when briefed on what is the most important mission in the history the human species, one of the pilots goes “oh! hold me!”………..like a douche I might add. I’ve never been in a briefing room, but I figure they at least take their jobs, which involve life and death and serious focus and discipline to separate the two, somewhat seriously. And that line wasn’t even that funny. >:( But at least the filmmakers were consistent in keeping all the characters equally unbelievable. 

So, somehow the USAF, being apparently bunch of douches, runs out of pilots but has plenty of planes to hand out. Hey! Crazy redneck! Can you fly things with wings?! Awesome! Get you’re crazy alien-abducted ass over here! America needs a hero! I think its amazing how while this movie came out in 1996, the filmmakers were able to make a reference to the Presidential Elections of 2000; the aliens probably informed them of the future. Anyways, that scene was stupid, but I guess if they’re willing to trust “oh! hold me!” with a complex multi-million dollar weapon system that flies and has the capability to destroy hundreds of people with the push of a button, why not the crazy redneck?!

SECOND CLAUSE: IT JUST SUCKED! OKAY

There was a serious scene, so they put a joke in it. There was a funny scene, and they tried to sneak in some kinda serious thing. Aliens invade the world, and the gay guy’s like “I have to call my mother” in a seemingly comical way. They need a serious looking scientist, they cast Jeff Goldblum. “I hope they bring Elvis back!” amidst the Empire State building blowing up. A DOG does the bruce willis/trinity/a lot of awesome actions movies-leap-of-epicness-away-from-an-exploding-thing-behind-them.…………………Did they think they were being creative in taking a classic action move and making a dog do it? It looked like Pee-Wee Herman in a fight scene, or Jackie Chan in a really intense romance scene, or Mr.Roger playing a lawyer, or these recent family films the Rock has been “cookin”, or like a dog doing the leap of epicness away from the explosion. It looks so weird its just funny. 

That leap is a Hollywood cliche, having a dog do it is like making an Alien movie that tries to be funny and serious and realistic at the same time! and i didn’t like it. 

“Inception” didn’t suck…..

Several hundred million dollars will attest to the attractiveness and entertaining ability of Christopher Nolan’s filmmaking style. Its not so much in his camera work, as it is in the narrative structures and pacing of story information disclosure. Unfortunately, Inception was one film where his style was a weak point.

Its a movie about the architecture of our dreams and how it reflects the depths and power of our minds. A brilliant concept: thought provoking, mystifying, twisted, fascinating. What could go wrong? Nolan’s own creativity clashing with his in-depth plot development were the first problem.

Sticking to the typical Nolan opening, the story is revealed in full swing, with the audience waiting in suspense to find out what’s going on. However, what sets Inception apart from previous Nolan films is the level of complexity involved in this dream world. 

Because the story starts off in full swing, the many explanations that are needed for the audience to understand the story get crammed in in all kinds of ways. Theres information about the structure of the narrative world even being disclosed towards the end of the movie. This weakens the climax because the audience doesn’t have the time to fully understand the stakes, the rules and the real consequences of this complex story. Overall, the climax is visually and aesthetically pleasing, but doesn’t have the emotional pull I think Nolan was aiming for. There wasn’t a very prominent sense of very real danger because there is only one line (“we could fall into a coma”) that really creates the idea although this is a dream, the characters are at risk. The intention that that line had needed to be more clearly and effectively expressed, and that needed to be done so earlier on so that by the time we get into the dream, we know what Leonardo DiCaprio is getting himself into. 

Now, here’s the other thing about Inception: it wasn’t twisted. There’s a lot of information being withheld, more than there should be, so everything is all mysterious, but the visuals do not reflect that mysteriousness. The only real mysterious-looking scene was where their in that basement and those people are addicted to the dream machine thing. Besides that, pretty much all the scenes are pretty well lit, and don’t look heavy, or twisted, or mysterious at all. The movie gives the sense that everything there is to know about dreams is known, which is a bit of a disappointment because the great thing about making a movie about dreams is the way it makes you see and feel the strangeness and its concepts and themes. Nolan however opted for coolness. 

One critic (don’t remember what their name was but who cares about critics anyways) said it was like “James Bond meets The Matrix.” Yeah, maybe the idea was “Matrix-y” but not the style. The Matrix was a dark a story about dark situations, thus its was literally dark a lot of the time. Batman was dark, even Memento was pretty dark, but what happened to that movie that explores the depths of the human mind by penetrating through dreams in an effort to create original inspiration designed by outside influence; why wasn’t Inception like those three movies? And no, I’m not trying to say that movies that are twisted should a certain way like theres rules or something; what I’m trying to say is that a movies themes and concepts should be matched by its shooting style and overall look (therein feel). 

Also, before I wrap this up, sorry about using the over-generalization of “dark,” but you know what I mean. 

Inception didn’t suck, it was some awesome ideas, but compared to what I expected, the execution wasn’t exactly a dream come true. 

“The Fourth Kind” was okay

Real footage is scarier than reenacted footage, but suspense of disbelief is way crazy strong. That mostly sums up my criticism of The Fourth Kind.

In my humble opinion, this is what I think the filmmaker was going for…which unfortunately back-fired on him…

(him being director Olatunde Osunsanmi) 

: He’s got REAL footage, and REENACTMENT footage of some really freaky stuff. He cross cuts them, even does split screens showing single events played out by both the real people (as recorded by a camera the had with them), and by actors (as recorded by some nice expensive stuffs) simultaneously. Tension builds, cross cuts increase, and what we as the audience are supposed to think is:

“what! thats not possible! thats just a reenactment! yeah, theres actress Mila Jovovich acting her ass off, but this is based on real events…oh snap! the actual footage is gonna come up any second now, just like it always does throughout this movie! but it can’t be! this is only possible in Hollywood! OMG! THATS THE ACTUAL FOOTAGE! IM HORRIFIED LIKE A LOT!” 

So basically, its a clever shot pattern: show actors act out something that is only possible in movies, then show actual footage of actual people actually involved in those events; and in re-realizing that this all really happened, you freak out (hopefully).

PROBLEM: “Real footage is scarier than reenacted footage, but suspense of disbelief is way crazy strong.” —me

The filmmaker felt that the real footage is an unstoppable force because its real; that we will feel fear and extreme discomfort in seeing even the shortest durations of actual footage because it reminds us that what we are seeing is real and thus can haunt us in our own lives. 

(btw, by “us” and by “audience” I mean me)

Here’s the ting. When watching Hollywood-looking footage, like the reenactment footage, suspense of disbelief is vital because we know, on some level, that what we are seeing is not real. In my opinion, Olatunde Osunsanmi underestimated the power of suspense of disbelief.

It takes time and some concentration to break suspense of disbelief because its a programed and intuitive response to film viewing. Cross-cutting provides none of the necessary time to sit back and say, “wow, so this is real.” Yes, there was the intro where Mila Jovovich states that it all actually happened and that she’s just an actress acting out real events, but suspense of disbelief can set in almost immediately as the expensive, cinematic, reenactment footage starts rolling. Yes, the actual footage never stays away for too long, but because the reenactment footage is there for a majority of the time (about 90% of the time) there seems to be a constantly layer of filmic-disbelief protection that keeps us at a distance from what’s going on on screen. 

O.O. I feel should have had long, merciless, painful, excruciating scenes of just actual footage, letting it build up its own suspense, letting the distance between the audience and the characters diminish as the undeniable truth that these people are not actors sinks in, and manifests a sense of terrifying relation, and thus a terrifying sense of vulnerability. There is no safety because you are simply in a theater: what happened to them can very easily happen to you, and once you leave this theater you will have very little control of your own fate, or even survival.

THATS WHAT A HORROR MOVIE IS SUPPOSED TO DO! Who cares about Mila Jovovich, if we see her get torn in half it’ll be just another girl torn in half in a movie. But we watch a guy for real kill his family, that takes a second to take in, and more than a second to prepare for. 

HOWEVER, this movie did not suck. There was some brilliant camera work, the acting was pretty good, there was this one shot with the owl that was really freaky and made me officially not like owls. And it dealt with real stuff, and while I sat there begging “please show the actual footage!” what they did show was pretty crazy; the delivery nonetheless didn’t have the knockout impact that it should have had if it had sat and simmered before it was served. 

So yeah, didn’t suck, it was iight.

“Sex in the City” sucked

That movie was longer that The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the Star Wars saga, Ghandi, King Kong, A Bridge too Far, Gone with the Wind, and 24 Season 2 COMBINED!

Okay, I exaggerate slightly, but DAMN, that movie felt like an eternity! And its only 145 minutes long! How did they figure out how to stretch 145 min into an eternity? I’ll tell you….but first:

If anyone is reading this and is wondering “well why did you (male type humanoid) watch it?” Well I love film, its my duty, and I’m not going to go into defending my manhood. Anyways…

Carrie gets dumped at the altar. A year goes by, and she, being the creative writer that she is, spends every moment of that year inventing ever-new ways to express her self pity. They go to a party, she talks about how she got dumped. She goes to the most beautiful resort this side of the universe, she talks about how she got dumped. She writes about how she got dumped. She reads a book to a young child, and talks about how she got dumped. She goes costume shopping with her friend and random kid randomly flies by the frame making random noises and freaks people out, but does not freak our Carrie out, why? “It’ll take a lot more than that to scare me after what I’ve been through.”

That random kid was not so random it seems: he was just another forced gimmick in the film designed to prompt Carrie to express her self pity once more, just in case you missed it the first couple of times.

Now, movies with depressed protagonists can be great (Citizen Kane, Adaptation, Fight Club), but not when their complaining about the same thing for hours! And especially not when the thing they’re depressed about is due to misinformation from a friend. Yes, the whole drama of the story starts at the very beginning, and you know its gonna get resolved, but before it does, you have to watch Carrie sulk about it for hours, and rediscover herself and rebuild her life on what are apparently false pretenses.

She gets back with Big and the whole story seems pointless. She doesn’t change that much as a person, and what change she does experience is not really shown: we don’t really see her changing, instead we see her feeling bad for herself. Now, before I can continue with this point, I have to bring up something else that’ll lead back to this point (hopefully):

Miranda doesn’t tell Carrie that she is a big part of the reason Big left her at the altar, so basically the whole movie only occurs because one character didn’t tell another character something. Mind you this is generally not a bad narrative structure in film:

Slight misinformation like this can make a great film too (The Conversation), but not unless there is a snowballing effect and some actual dramatic build up and ironic twists and turns and real development of the suspense that is created between the audience knowing something the protagonist doesn’t. In Sex in the City? No, no snowballs at all. One thing happens: Mirand doesn’t fess up, FOR A LONG TIME. The only plot development that comes out of the misinformation is that Carrie visits Mexico, hires Jennifer Hudson, and makes the biggest revelation of her life: SHE MATERIALISTIC! 

Holy guacamole, she’s materialistic and I didn’t even see it coming.

Not much of a snowball, more like hot air.

The other Holy Guacamole moments in this film are: Samantha is incapable of monogamy in the beginning of the movie, Samantha is incapable of monogamy at the end of the movie; Charlotte wants a baby at the beginning of the movie, Charlotte gets a baby; Cynthia breaks up with Steve, Cynthia gets back together with Steve. Again, no snowball. Mirand does something, Big does something, Carrie does the same thing for a long time only to go back to what she was doing in the beginning (getting married), and the other characters either do something predictable after a long waiting period, or do nothing.

Now, characters not changing much is not generally a bad thing either:

Movies can still be good even when the characters don’t change much throughout the story (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) as they do in this film, especially when the characters are loveable. Unfortunately, this film does not have a natural flow of events: the characters just feel a lot for a long time without much happening. If characters are not going to change much, the world around them should change drastically so as to create interesting juxtapositions that further emphasize the stubborness of their personalities.

Additionally, (and conclusively) great films use creatively designed situations to express the feelings of their characters, not repetitive statements. What happens is what is felt. It shouldn’t be one event that happens, followed by a long period of just feeling and thinking out loud without any of the mystique that comes with trying to understand the character beyond what they say (or say over and over again). Overall, there’s very little creativity in this film, there is very little drama that doesn’t feel forced or that is going to eventually be predictably resolved, and unless you have watched an eternity of Sex in the City episodes and love these girls, I feel its hard to care much for their problems throughout their extremely long journey to apparently no where new.