September 27, 2008
Street Kings (2008)
The boys and I watched Street Kings
Still reeling from the death of his wife, Los Angeles detective Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) is devastated when he's named as a suspect in the murder of his partner (Terry Crews). With the help of a young homicide detective (Chris Evans), Ludlow struggles to clear his name. His boss (Forest Whitaker), meanwhile, tries to protect him from a tough Internal Affairs investigator (Hugh Laurie) who's determined to put Ludlow behind bars.
This is an exciting action cop drama with plenty of graphic violence, car chases and shootouts just like you would expect.
It is kind of predictable, but the story makes sense, it's easy to follow, but you have no idea just how many bad and dirty cops there are until the movie really gets going.
This movie has tons of twists and turns, but the cast and acting is top notch.
Whitaker gives an outstanding performance as usual, and Reeves really seems to play well with him in the scenes they share together.
People often say that Reeves acting is emotionless and wooden, but when he's paired up with really great actors, he comes alive.
This is a cop/action flick I highly recommend to people who love cop thrillers and violence.
It was a really great ride, and the ending was a good payoff.
Sayeth Kat at 9:53 PM | Comments [0] | Movies
August 16, 2008
Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince delayed. Bummer.
So the newest Harry Potter movie will not be coming to theaters this November 2008, but instead it now slated for release in July 2009.
In a surprise move, Warner Bros. has moved back the release date of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" from Nov. 11 to July 17, 2009.
"Like every other studio, we are still feeling the repercussions of the writers strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films — changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of," he said. "We agreed the best strategy was to move 'Half-Blood Prince' to July, where it perfectly fills the gap for a major tent pole release for mid-summer."
The studio said it still plans to release the two-movie adaptation of the final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows," as planned, with the first part still on for November 19, 2009."Half-Blood," which translates the sixth book to the big screen, is being directed by David Yates. According to the studio, post-production was been completed on time.
This is a total bummer.
The teens and I have always gone to see the new HP movies in the theaters, it's like the only movies we hit the theaters for, and now we will have to wait.
That sucks.
Damn writer's strike.
Sayeth Kat at 1:12 AM | Comments [0] | Movies
July 30, 2008
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince trailer is up!
It's looking really good so far, check out the trailer!
Sayeth Kat at 12:34 AM | Comments [0] | Movies
June 23, 2008
Timber Falls (2007)
When Mike (Josh Randall) and his girlfriend, Sheryl (Brianna Brown), go hiking in West Virginia, their idyllic getaway quickly turns into a nightmare they can't seem to wake from. Their choice to follow a less-traveled trail brings them face to face with a homicidal backwoods family with a creepy religious agenda. The next day, when Sheryl vanishes, Mike must comb the woods to find her, enduring a series of horrific events.
That is the basic plot for Timber Falls
This movie was so much better than I thought it would be, I just rented it because I love horror/slasher flicks, but it didn't disappoint at all.
It had a pretty intelligent story, pretty decent acting, and it moved at a pretty fast clip.
There wasn't a single moment you could turn away from the screen due to any type of boredom, it really kept you involved and paying close attention.
It has all of the elements that are lacking from other horror movies, and that you wish those other movies had, like the decent story and decent acting.
Our main characters, played by Randall and Brown, are two of the dumbest hikers ever though, they do one stupid thing after another in the beginning of the movie like taking a trail that they know is not patrolled by the park rangers, continuing on that same trail even after meeting up with some backwood rednecks that are far from helpful and nice, and Brown (the girlfriend Sheryl) is especially stupid for going for a morning swim in the lake by herself after the troubles they had just the day before.
The twisted backwood religious family, is absolutely crazy and sadistic, but absolutely totally enjoyable!
Their whole need for kidnapping young couples is because the wife, Ida, cannot carry a child of her own to term, and with the help of her husband and park ranger himself, Clyde, and her deformed by fire brother Deacon, they kidnap and force young healthy couples to have sex and conceive a child for Ida to raise as her own.
If the couple isn't married, Ida marries them in the eyes of the lord, and then forces them by horribly torturous means, to produce a child for her and her husband.
They (Sheryl and Mike) probably would have complied with the forced sex if maybe, just maybe, the religious freaks would have cleaned the blood off of Sheryl, and put her in something a little more enticing like a nicer nightie or some sort of sexy babydolls lingerie.
Blood and a white gown with a big ol' cross on it, isn't exactly sexually appealing.
Mike (Randall) endures the absolute worst of all the injuries and torture in this movie.
When he realizes Sheryl is gone, he goes running through the woods to find her, trips, and ends up with a stick stabbing him deep in his arm.
He removes it and ties a bandanna around it, only to run into the first group of rednecks again, and getting into a knife and gunfight where he's hit hard several times, and cut across one of his legs.
He survives that, only to step in a bear trap just a few minutes later.
He is "rescued" by Ida only to find out just a little later, that she is the captor of his girlfriend Sheryl.
He is whipped by cat o' 9 tails, branded with a branding iron, beaten, stabbed, hit about the head with the butt end of a shotgun, a shovel, fists, and finally a huge knife to the gut.
I don't want to tell you any more, I really think that if you are a fan of slashers and horror films, that this is one you should definitely rent because of how much slashing takes place, and because it's actually a very intelligent horror film.
I was very surprised at just how well the story was done, and I really think that if they had a bigger budget, some better cameras, and some A-list actors in the lead roles, that this movie could have done really great in theaters.
It was only released in 49 theaters nationwide.
I really believe that despite the above, that this is a really good movie, and it even left it open for a part 2, which I would definitely see.
It scored poorly on Rotten Tomatoes for some silly parts, (what horror movie doesn't have a few laughable scenes?) only having 1 "fair" review out of a total of 4 reviews, but ranks highly of the reviewers on Netflix, getting 3.5 stars out of 5.
It gets an "ok" rating and a pretty good review at BoxOffice.com, calling it "a perfectly serviceable scary movie."
On a scale of 1-5 stars, I give it a 4.5.
Sayeth Kat at 12:52 AM | Comments [0] | Movies
Pump Up the Volume (1990)
Sebastian and I decided to walk down and get us all some subs for lunch, and the going out of business Boogie Woogie cd, dvd, and video game store, is still open, and now everything is up to 75% off.
So we swung in to check and see if they had any more good deals.
All their used dvds are now another $3.50 off, so movies are super duper cheap.
I found buried amongst some truly horrible titles, the 1990 film Pump up the Volume
Anyone remember this one?
When a book on Lenny Bruce falls into the right young, disaffected, youthful hands, the FCC has its work cut out for it. Christian Slater plays a quiet high school student whose alter ego "Hard Harry" cries injustice and spins punk and rap records from his basement at night for a growing fan base who finds his radio frequency. When the ultra-conservative school administration starts swinging, Hard Harry's fans rally, and Slater gets the girl.
The story line is a little more complicated than that little blurb though.
Slater is a young high school teen, who has moved to a new suburb in Arizona because his dad is the new school commissioner or some big named position, and he hasn't made any friends, and the school really sucks.
The principal has been slowly and systematically expelling students she feels are losers, yet keeping them on the student roster to be able to keep the government funds for "the good of the school."
The student body is disenchanted, and going through the motions just trying to please their parents and the teachers, and be whatever the adults in their lives tell them to be.
When Slater starts up his pirate radio show talking about how it all sucks and to just be who they are, be crazy, do what you want, speak out, and whatever they label you as, so be it, the students start feeling alive again.
After the call in of a young student who wants to commit suicide and then does, the school and police start trying to find out who Hard Harry is, and shut down his radio station.
What happens after that is that the students don't want to calm down, they don't want the radio show to end, and Hard Harry and the students keep fighting back in whatever ways they can.
And unlike most teen movies of the 80's and 90's, there is no prom, there is no wrong side of the tracks love story with a super happy ending and pretty pink dress, this is teen rebellion with all it's angst and problems, from suicide, to coming out of the closet in a defining moment kind of way.
Instead of the usual stereotyping of being a fag, Hard Harry instead tells the young male caller how he finds the bravery of people to be amazing, and with that he signs off for the night leaving his listening fans to ponder the coming out confession and who they are as well.
The movie has it's absolutely silly moments as well, it's truly stupid in some parts, but hey, no movie is without it's flaws.
But Pump Up the Volume is a really decent flick and has an amazing soundtrack.
Liquid Jesus' anthem- Stand, to Chagall Guevera's Tale O' The Twister, and Concrete Blonde, Peter Murphy, The Pixies, Soundgarden and Sonic Youth.
The opening song that is played several times throughout the film, Everybody Knows, is done by both Leonard Cohen and Concrete Blonde in the film, yet Cohen's version is noticeably missing from the soundtrack
I prefer his version over the latter myself.
His voice is raw and real, and his version is slowed down a bit, allowing you to hear every word, and really get a feel for the meaning behind the lyrics.
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows
Anyway, it's a good a movie, on a scale of 1-5 stars, I give it a 3.5, and only that low because of some of the silliness.
I really think they could have left that out and had a truly remarkable teen rebellion film on their hands that was unlike every other teen movie past or present.
Sayeth Kat at 12:51 AM | Comments [0] | Movies
Creepshow (1982)
We watch a lot of movies here, the teens and I are huge fans of films, and they are so totally my kids.
They love horror movies as much as I do!
Tonight's dinner and a movie fest is a flick from 1982, and was based on the E.C. horror comics of the 1950's, Stephen King's Creepshow
The screenplay was written by King, and it was directed by George Romero.
There are 5 short films on the disc, Father's Day, The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, Something to Tide You Over, The Crate, and They're Creeping Up On You.
All of the actors of these short stories are very famous stars, Leslie Nielsen, Hal Holbrook, Ted Danson, Adrienne Barbeau, Ed Harris, E.G. Marshall, and as he always has done, even Stephen King himself makes an appearance in the starring role of Jordy Verill.
All of the stories are good, and even though the movie is 26 years old now, it still holds up pretty well.
For the time, 1982, the special effects were on par with all of Hollywood, they look completely out-dated now, of course, and in some of them like Father's day, totally cheesy, but one of them still scares the crap out of me to this day.
The Crate.
It's the longest one on the disc.
It stars Hal Holbrook as a sort of loser professor at a local college, whose wife is a horribly nasty woman.
"Billie" is played by Adrienne Barbeau, a drunk and offensive old hag, who makes his (Holbrook) life hell.
When a colleague of his finds a really old crate under the stairs at the college with a really hungry creature locked away inside that has eaten two people already, he finally finds a way to get rid of his verbally abusive and hated wife.
He lures her to the college on a made up story of a young co-ed being sexually assaulted by his colleague, telling her she's the only one who can coax the young girl out from under the stairs.
Once she gets down there, he stirs the monster awake, it devours her, and then he dumps the crate off a cliff into the ocean.
He and his colleague think it's all over, no evidence of any foul play, but the monster breaks free of it's crate under the sea in the very last scene.
This is also the bloodiest one of the five, and it's definitely the scariest.
I've seen Creepshow about a dozen or more times over the years, and it still doesn't disappoint as a fun movie.
Sayeth Kat at 12:49 AM | Comments [0] | Movies
June 7, 2008
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)
Born with an acute sense of smell, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw) resorts to dark deeds in creating a perfume that captures the essence of a woman in this 18th-century thriller based on Patrick Suskind's best-selling novel. The disturbing intensity mounts as Baroque-born Grenouille's obsession to create the ultimate scent moves from innovation to murderous aberration. Alan Rickman co-stars along with Dustin Hoffman as a master perfumer.
We watched Perfume - The Story Of A Murderer
The story is so well done, the narration, the acting, and the period dress, everything about this movie is perfect.
It is rated R for "aberrant behavior involving nudity, violence, sexuality, and disturbing images", and yes, it deserves that rating, but wow, this is just such a great story.
It's disturbing and dark, Jean-Baptiste's obsession with capturing the scent of women as pure essence oils, and what he does to get them, is disturbing yet sensual.
He takes great care of their skin and hair, gentle touches to the skin, it's painful to him.
Each perfume is made up of a top note, a middle note, and a base note.
By adding just one more oil, you completely change the scent of the perfume, and Jean-Baptiste wants nothing more than to capture and save forever, the very essence, the souls, of women.
His obsession leads him to first try to get women to let him cover them in animal fat, wrap them in cloth, and then after a few hours, unwrap them and squeeze the fat into a pot mixed with alcohol to boil it, and have the liquid evaporate and rise to the top of the oil maker, where the essence oil will then drip down into a vial.
But the women think he's just some kind of kinky rapist, they don't understand, so they try to escape and he's left with no choice but to kill them in order to capture their scents.
I will not spoil this for any of you who may be interested in renting it from Netflix or your fave movie rental place, but it has a really great and sad ending, yet the perfect closing for the tale.
This really is a very interesting and captivating movie.
It held both the teens attention through the entire movie, a full 2 hours and 27 minutes, and when it was over, they said how much they liked it, and that I picked a really good one this time.
Haha! I pick a lot of good movies dammit!
Sayeth Kat at 1:21 PM | Comments [0] | Movies
