Tag: Revenge

Movie Round-Up: July 30th, 2010

Reviews

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore:

Do I even have to say, “No”?  I shouldn’t have to, but I will.  No.

Charlie St. Cloud:

This movie isn’t getting good reviews.  The few good ones call it a sentimental tearjerker, so if you are into those sorts of films, perhaps you’ll enjoy it.  For me, I don’t mind the tearjerkers, but I’m not going to pay $10 for this.  Someday the wife and I will watch it on Netflix.

Dinner for Schmucks:

I don’t think I could do it.  If my boss told me to come to a dinner and bring an idiot for us to make fun of, I’d probably start looking for another job.  However, watching other people do it?  That’s comedy!  To be honest, I went in to the screening I saw of this movie expecting it to be stupid, but it managed to be funny, heartwarming and creepy.  At moments it was downright hilarious.  You could easily find worse ways to spend your hard earned money.

Movie Round-Up: March 12th, 2010

Reviews

Remember Me:

If I didn’t know better, I might think this was another Nicolas Sparks book turned into a movie.  I’m pretty sure the movie is going to be entirely unsurprising.  Boy gets in trouble, boy has poor relationship with father, boy decides to get revenge on man who does wrong to him by dating that man’s daughter, boy falls in love with girl, girl finds out about trouble and revenge scheme, they split, boy proves he really does love her even after his own father tells him he’s better off without her.  Roll credits.  It doesn’t look horrible, it just looks typical, and as much of a sucker as I am for romantic comedies, romantic dramas I tend to wait for DVD.

Our Family Wedding:

I watched the trailer for this and I can’t put my finger on it, but I think I’ve seen this movie before.  Mixed marriage, cultures collide.  Eh… I won’t be running to the theater to see this, but I can see myself putting it on Netflix when its there and I’m bored.

Green Zone:

Matt Damon makes good action films.  You know, from the beginnings of his career I wouldn’t have guessed that, but he does.  The Bourne films showcased it, and this movie looks to be following in those footsteps.  I really want to see this one.

She’s Out of My League:

The only movie releasing this week that I managed to see a screening of, and it was awesome.  The story is about a guy who isn’t particularly good looking, with a crappy job and no real ambition, who has been dumped by a girl that treats him poorly but he thinks he loves, and how he begins dating a girl who is smart, successful, and gorgeous.  I think what I loved most about this movie is that while it does have a bit of foul language and some shocking scenes, it never scrapes the bottom of the barrel.  It never goes disgustingly scatological.  Even when it gets close, it handles it in a more mature way, leaving the “worst parts” to be inferred by the audience.  I really enjoyed this film, much more than I thought I would.  And the wife loved it too, so I’d even safely recommend this as a date movie.

Movie Round-Up: June 26th, 2009

Reviews

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:

Pass.

Really, that’s about all want to say about it.  The first film was a piece of crap.  The story was poor, the acting was bad, they butchered the source material, and the action was that too-fast-to-follow sort where two things smash into each other, stuff happens, and then one of them wins.  Seeing the trailer for this just reminded me of how much I disliked the first one and how I was going to make no effort at all to see this one.  Sure, people will claim that its just a summer popcorn flick and I expect too much of it, but even for a cartoon designed to sell toys, the original had so much more heart and soul than Michael Bay’s bastardization.  It deserved so much better.

Save your money.  Please.  If it bombs, maybe he’ll stop.

My Sister’s Keeper:

I wept like a little girl.  Movies about cancer patients tend to get at me anyway, but this one was particularly heart wrenching because it is so well acted.  I won’t lie, I saw the “twist” in this film coming a mile away, but there was real edge of my seat interest in watching how long it would play out and at point would everything come to light.  It sounds odd to write about a movie which is about a girl dying of cancer and her sister who doesn’t want to be a donor anymore, but it is how I feel.  I’ve seen criticisms of the movie, and the book on which it is based, from people who say they have a child with leukemia and life isn’t like that, mother’s don’t act that way, donor siblings don’t refuse, blah blah blah… for one, this is a story, it is fiction, and a story in which everyone was happy and the only thing that happened was a girl died of cancer, well, that wouldn’t exactly be riveting viewing.  For me, I can easily see how a mother could get so swept up in saving the life of one of her children that many “lesser concerns” go unnoticed or forgotten.

All in all, a good movie… but bring tissues.

Yar’s Revenge

Gaming

Today is the Superbowl, which in recent years (about as long as I can remember) is little more than a program about advertising that gets repeatedly interrupted by a football game, and given that I present you with a comparison of advertisements.

This is why I game…

… this is why I hang my head in shame…

The Amulet of Samarkand

Reviews

I suppose one of the things that always kept me away from the Harry Potter books were the descriptions of Harry himself. In the beginning he’s pure and noble, and everything he does is for the good. Its almost sickening sweet. The later books help fix him up right as he makes mistakes and costs people their lives.

In The Amulet of Samarkand, the first of the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, one of the main characters is a horribly flawed boy who lives in a horribly flawed world. In the London of his world, magicians rule, literally. They aren’t hidden or secret, they run Parliment and keep the “commoners” beneather their feet. Common children are sold into apprenticeship where they are forced to forget their birth names and learn the ways of magic. Nathaniel, is one such child who is apprenticed to a minor magician of small power, but Nathaniel wishes to be greater, teaching himself more than his master will allow, especially once he is humiliated by Simon Lovelace, a much more powerful magician. Nathaniel takes his self taught knowledge and summons Bartimaeus to help him get his revenge on Lovelace. The only problem is, in seeking his revenge he stumbles on to a much more deadly plot by some of London’s other magicians. While keeping revenge on his mind, Nathaniel also decides that he needs to help the society of magicians by stopping this fiendish plot.

Most of the tale is told by Bartimaeus, who like many of the demons summoned by magicians, hates magicians and their petty squabbles. He’s also a wise cracking smartass, which helps keep the book fun and fast. One of the things I really enjoyed about this book, however, is that while it does leave some loose ends, the tale sits well by itself, and if I never manage to read the rest of the trilogy, I won’t feel like I’m missing something. I would gladly recommend it to young and not-so-young readers.

Kill Bill Vol. 2 & The Punisher

Reviews

It was a weekend of revenge at the movies.

First up, Kill Bill Vol. 2. Volume 1 was a spectacle of kung-fu and splatter style gore. Arms and heads removed with ten foot arcs of blood. The body count was high. The story was interesting, uncomplicated, and above all else, action packed.

In Volume 2, the death count drops, in fact, unless I’m mistaken, only 4 people die in it. This volume spends more time focusing on the back story of Black Mamba (Uma Thurman), and how she became the woman she was. As I overheard someone say, "Quentin saved all the talking for this one." And they were right… the story here is thicker, sometimes slow, but still cool enough to keep me watching the screen and not my watch.

The two movies really are an excellent pair, and one day when they make the special collector’s edition DVD with an hour or so of extra footage, it will find its way into my collection for sure.

In another tale of revenge, The Punisher brings to the screen the Marvel Comics character of the same name. And while they changed many of the details of his original (Vietnam Vet just doesn’t fly as easily anymore if you want to set the story in current day), the changes made didn’t detract from the character. Frank Castle is a man whose family is killed by criminals, and he decides that with the life he still has he will stop as many of them as he can.

Its not revenge, its punishment.

While I did find some of the earlier scenes of the movie, mainly those setting up for the death of Frank’s family, to be "laying it on a bit thick," once the action started, it was mezmerizing. The fight scenes, both hand to hand and gun battles, were well done, with the right touch of violence without being overly vicious (some on screen stab wounds were paticularly unsettling, but most finishing shots on wounded victims were done off screen).

As long as Marvel keeps putting out quality films like this for its properties, they can continue to count on my hard earned movie dollar.