This past summer, you couldn’t even swing your mighty hammer of Mjolnir without hitting a superhero movie. I mean you had X-Men, Thor, Green Lantern and Captain America all coming out during the summer months. It was a bit of a sensory overload with four movies all going for the origin story boot and franchise beginnings. Wading through these movies was a joy, except for Green Lantern, and while some people didn’t like Captain America, I personally found a lot of enjoyment from the films even with the shortcomings of the story. To be fair, this is one of the best origin story films to have come out in the past year.
(As an editor’s note, I will make few to little comparisons to the book series as I want to objectively review this film based as just a film. There are many people who have not read the series and I wish that they would. If going into the movie without any knowledge, this will be a review about the movie itself.)
In some instances, I kind of weep for the future children out there that line up for movies like Twilight. With a female lead who is about as a moopy as Droopy the Dog, it saddens me that someone like Bella Swan is looked up to as a role model and something to aspire to for teens. Sure, Twilight Books and their films are about as empty and trashy as they come, but making fun of those mediums is like shooting fish in a barrel and waste of coherent thought. So this evening I attended the midnight screening of The Hunger Games, a film that has been catching on like wildfire and the next film series lifted from the every growing young adult book genre. In the midst of a fever pitch of excitement and many teens staging their own occupy AMC theater for the showing of the film that might define their lives, I smiled a bit inside because what they were going to see and experience is a film that would make them take their Bella Swan posters and replace with Jennifer Lawrence.
I will admit that I never really watched the television show, 21 Jump Street. I was far too young for the edginess that was the late 80s and the procedural nature of two undercover officers posing as teens in high school and busting up the cheer club or whatever. I was around the age of 3 at the time so I couldn’t comprehend much at the time, but through my pursuit of pop culture knowledge, I came to learn that the show was a serious undercover format and that High School is apparently dangerous as Compton. So while this show has faded into the pop culture lexicon, thank the idealess Hollywood Execs and their penchant for making the old new again for bringing back this crime drama and turning into something that we can all handle, a buddy cop comedy.
Everybody get up it’s time to slam now
We got a real jam goin’ down
Welcome to the Space Jam
Here’s your chance, do your dance at the Space Jam
Alright….
Thank you Quad City DJ’s for getting me up and getting me ready for the Space Jam. 1996 was one of the top years in my life. I was coasting through life and seemingly innocent in my ways. I thought that it couldn’t get better until I saw the above trailer for what would end up being one of the greatest sports film in the history of cinema. At the age of 11, I was pretty confident about that assertion, I mean who was going to crush the hopes and dreams of a little kid? Assholes Nick, assholes were going to ruin your fun. You couldn’t meet a teen or kid or whatever who wasn’t basically losing their collective shit when two of the greatest things in the world were coming together in one movie that would essentially be the encapsulation of the 90s, Bill Murray and Basketball. Shit yes.
I haven’t done a zombie film in a while and since coming off of the season finale of The Walking Dead, what better way to continue the high of zombie-ness than with a balls out zombie flick. I got to hand it to those crafty Norwegians with their beautiful country, beautiful women and beautifully wacky films. If you have never seen Troll Hunter, that is a must for any film fan, but while mythical trolls lumbering around the country side is appealing and downright ridiculous, Dead Snow brings us Nazi zombies. Yes those dastardly WWII villains are now zombified, thus making the act of slaying them all the more sweeter.
I feel that I have vastly underrepresented my Mexican heritage here with a lack of Spanish language films, I plan to rectify that at some point. For now, I take one small step towards equality with a Mexican heist film that plays out like a Telemundo version of the Ocean’s series. That isn’t a terrible comparison, as I really like the series, but it could have used a bit more Sabado Gigante and scantily clad Mexican women. Just saying.
A very unseen film upon its release and relatively unknown to the legion of Ryan Gosling fans out there, The United States of Leland really flew under the radar of film fans. Aside from the fact that the movie got some poor reviews, I found that the film has a lot of strong points in both acting and subject matter, which ultimately was the focal point for contention about the films plot and storyline. I think the thing that sets this apart from most movies is that it leaves with answers to something so brutal and horrific, that we feel empty in the end. It presents us with a crime that is never fully explained and dangles the idea of understanding, just slightly out of reach.
When I reviewed this movie several months back, I didn’t think that I was going to like it at first. To me, Immortals was just another entry into the sword and sandals epics that seems to have taken a style over substance stance to the ADD generation of movie goers. Lo and behold, I was correct, but that doesn’t mean that the film is without some merits. Shit I bought this film on Blu-ray for the sheer purpose of letting me eyeballs melt to the gorgeous visuals of Tarsem Singhs genius and a stunning, fast paced action flick. On a base level, this film satiated all my needs like the King Hyperion of old.
You know a movie franchise is good when they decide to take it into space. I really have nothing to say today about the movie other than I wanted to post this for St. Patrick’s Day. If you came here today looking for some insight into this, then I am truly sorry. It’s a movie where the villain is in space, looking for gold and killing people. Done and done. I could make up some crap about it being a metaphor for greed and limitless bounds that humans will do to get, such as reaching for the stars or some shit, but honestly no.
I remember a time when I had nightly poker games at random friends houses with the television tuned to the non-stop coverage of everything poker. Sure our games and wagers were meager and not as exciting as the games on television, but damned if it wasn’t cool in some weird high school way where we felt like champs when we took the pot. I know I might catch flack for this, but I found the sideshow circus on the television far more interesting than the game taking place in poorly lit basement on the bargain sale felt poker table top that you can get at any Walmart. I mean, yeah you are spending some times with friends and playing poker, but come on, your tells are obvious and I drew a straight on the flop, you can’t WIN.
The poker on television was a spectacle to behold with the cavalcade of personalities that are fit some weird noir-ish archetype. You got the naive, lucky beginner player, then the willy veteran, the poker legend of old, the mysterious foreign national and even the wild card player of the table. Also there would occassionally be the femme fatale who was there in a low cut top dress as her weapon of choice, which was always a nice change of pace. So a movie comes along that tries to capture the wackiness of the poker world and does so with a free spirit and a ridiculous ensemble cast of actors and actresses to play in a poker tournament. It’s a good change of pace from the usual back alley and high stakes poker films we usually see and a entry into the mockumentary genre.
