Rambo: Heroes never die.... They just reload

Have you ever been to IMDB? It’s easily one of my favorite sites. I can spend WAY too much time ranking movies and looking for “classic” movies to watch. I love seeing whether 'There Will Be Blood' or 'No Country For Old Men' will rank higher on the site’s Top 250 Movies of All-Time List.

(Yes, I’m a movie geek. Let’s move on.)

One reason I love the site, is that for the most part movies are ranked pretty much dead on with what I think. This week’s 'Meet the Spartans' is currently a 2.6/10. Since users vote for their favorites, film critic classics like 'Citizen Kane' don’t get as much love. Likewise, fan favorite 'Shawshank Redemption' is #2 all time.

Anyway, I wanted to see the initial response to the new Rambo movie. I expected it to be a crummy 3/10 or something ridiculous. Much to my surprise the movie is currently rated as a 8.5 and is listed as the 195th best movie of all time.

Rambo: IMDB Page

I’m not sure if this is a joke or not, but some people are saying it could be the most violent and best action movie of all time. I have a hard time believing this is better than my personal favorite - 'Die Hard'.

Before I get a divorce from my wife and go see this movie, please help me out. If you have seen Rambo, please post a quick review of it here. Didn’t EVERYBODY think this movie would be awful? By the way, Sylvester Stallone is 62. Also as a thanks for reading this, here are some of the multiple taglines for all the Rambo series (No, I didn't make these up. I'm not that awesome):

First Blood

One war against one man.

This time he's fighting for his life.

Rambo: First Blood Part II

What most people call hell, he calls home.

They sent him on a mission and set him up to fail. But they made one mistake. They forgot they were dealing with Rambo.

No man, no law, no war can stop him.

Rambo III

God would have mercy John Rambo won't!

The first was for himself. The second for his country. This time it's to save his friend.

Rambo

Heroes never die.... They just reload

R.I.P. - Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger found dead in NYC at age 28

Heath Ledger was found dead Tuesday at a downtown Manhattan residence, and police said drugs may have been a factor.

What a shame. His career seemed to really be looking up after critical success in Brokeback Mountain and his upcoming role as the Joker in the new Batman movie. I actually first remember him as the dreamy/rebellious kid in 10 Things I Hate About You.

R.I.P. Heath, we hardly knew you.

(Credit to Lindsay Beals for breaking the story to The Adams Family)

Movie Review – Cloverfield (Second is best)

Hey. I know Eric just created a Cloverfield movie review here…but I feel like I should also.

There are always film critic duos -- Ebert AND Ropert, Robert Deniro AND Al Pacino…and now there is Eric AND Shannon. (By the way, you should check out that Deniro and Pacino link, it is hilarious)

I think the reactions from people are quite polarizing: people either love it or hate it. Cloverfield is a very different movie than anything I’ve seen. Sure, it reminds you of other films (Godzilla, The Blair Witch Project, Saving Private Ryan, and The Day After Tomorrow) but it is completely unique in its ability to combine all of these into one amazing film. Is it a horror film? Action adventure? Documentary? Romance? Comedy? Um, yes.

The biggest backlash from the movie is the shaky camera. This is to be expected. DON’T sit on the front row or you will puke everywhere. Maybe take some Dramamine before you go. Look away from the film every once in a while to let your eyes refocus. After the initial running sequence, the shakiness eases up quite a bit (which makes you wonder why they had it in there to begin with).

The film is only 84 minutes, but to be honest, I don’t think I could handle much more. It was...intense. One thing I love about good movies is how they stay in your head and you can’t stop talking about them. Cloverfield definitely has that effect. JJ Abrams is a genius. There are even funny moments within the film to lighten the mood a bit - like Hud's line "Another thing that is also terrible".

Like Eric, I can’t say much about the plot without giving the movie away. I think the moral of the story is “don’t ever leave the person you love, even for like 5 minutes...because it is going to be hard to get him/her back”.

The movie cost about 25 million to produce...which, in a CGI film that is dirt cheap. It has already made about 40 million in 3 days. So watch out you overpaid actors who make crappy movies like "Mad Money" or "First Sunday"!

I gave this movie an 9.0 on imdb.

Movie Review: Cloverfield

Since his creation of “Alias” and “Lost”, I’ve basically decided to watch whatever J.J. Abrams makes and ask questions later. No matter what you say about the product he puts out, he gives each project of life of its own, and makes it tons more fun to follow than a typical CSI: (insert a variety of cities). So when I heard he was behind a monster movie, well let’s just say, I was a little exited.

J.J is a master of viral marketing and has taken the Internet by storm for the promotion of “Cloverfield”. He has two sites fully devoted to the movie itself. All 5 main characters of the movie have MySpace pages. No, not the actors, the characters’ themselves have fake accounts. J.J created a fictional drink called Slusho that has appeared in Alias, Lost, Heroes, and in the promotion of this movie. It’s a bit much, but he did turn this movie into a runaway winner at the box office. Estimates are around 40 million.

So where do I begin with a review of this movie? Here’s the best I’ve got: It’s a cross between The Blair Witch Project; Godzilla; Saving Private Ryan; and The Day After Tomorrow. And yes, this is a good thing.

The movie uses Blair Witch’s “found footage” angle. So everything you see is from a homemade video that was found by the government and cataloged to preserve the horrific events that happened. The first 5 minutes of the movie almost made me throw up and reminded me of when 10-year-old Cousin Jimmy got a hold of the camera at Christmas.

I compare it to Godzilla simple in the monster movie context. I could have said Mothra, but only 2 or 3 of you would have known what I was talking about. Here is a drawing of the creature. It seems pretty accurate. You never get a clear focused shot of the monster in the movie, which is great.

I know it’s a little weird to compare a story of WWII and a fictional demolition derby in NYC, but I think it holds up. You don’t see the monster attack from a distance. You truly become part of the action. I can honestly say that I’ve never been more locked in to a movie in my life. There’s no way to escape the sense of danger. You know the famous Omaha Beach scene from Saving Private Ryan. It’s like that, but for ¾ of the movie. You’re as helpless as the characters. But instead of getting Matt Damon, we’re stuck with the idiot son from ABC’s Carpoolers.

Have you all seen The Day After Tomorrow? You know, the uber global warming movie. In that, Denis Quaid makes an epic, heartfelt, absurd journey to save his son in the midst of the worst disaster the world’s ever known. Well, those same thought processes drive our main character to risk his and his friends’ lives to save his true love. Immediately after the movie, I told my wife to never do anything that stupid to save me. She quickly agreed.

Anyway, I can’t give much detail without spoiling a bit. All I can say is that if you’re planning on watching this, it must be done in the theater. After it was over, about 150 sat in our theater unable to move. It was like we couldn’t process everything. I’m not even sure if I liked it. But, I let myself be taking into JJ’s world, and it was the most intense movie I’ve ever seen.

Dinner and a Movie, or A Movie and Dinner?

I love living on a budget, but I hate the feeling of sacrifice. One of my favorite date-on-a-budget tricks is to go to the movie BEFORE dinner. With Movie prices around $9.50, the $6.50 Matinee is a great way to save $6.00 per couple without really sacrificing anything.

Well, Regal Entertainment Group has decided to burst my bubble. They’ve lowered their Matinee times to showings before 3:00 p.m., instead of the usual 6:00 p.m - thus thwarting my frugal efforts.

Fortunately Carmike Theaters still operates under the 6:00 p.m. cutoff.

Other ways to save at the box office: become a senior citizen, join the military, or go back to school. All completely worthwhile efforts to save a couple bucks twice a month.

Quick Movie Recommendation: Children of Men

I have a real follow-the-leader mentality when it comes to movies. I want to see everything that movie “historians” recommend as important films. So in my high school/college days, I tried to watch a bunch of AFI’s Top 100 Movies of All Time. You know what I quickly found out? A lot of those movies are unwatchable. I’ve been so exposed to larger-than-life action, dramatic cuts, and other shenanigans, that I fell asleep about 6 times trying to watch “Lawrence of Arabia”. I challenge anyone to start watching that movie at 10pm and make it through. Can’t be done. Also, I hate when some movies are ruined before you ever watch them. I watched “Shawshank Redemption” and “The Princess Bride” long after everybody else saw them. So I went into both with unrealistic expectations and both films have forever been ruined for me. So I’ll try not to ever do that with a movie review. Without further ado:





Children of Men instantly became one of my favorite movies of all time. It begins with an interesting premise: In the future, because of unknown reasons, women are no longer able to become pregnant. Worldwide chaos ensues. We follow Clive Owen and his attempt to make sure a random pregnant miracle girl safely reaches a group of scientists. This would hopefully save mankind.
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The story is by no means flawless, but I’m recommending this more for the style it was shot in. There are countless scenes were director Alfonso Cuarón uses long uninterrupted tracking shots. You really feel as if you are a bystander instead of just a viewer at your house. Check out this link to see a nice documentary of how some of this stuff was done. Instead of the director editing together a ton of footage, he trusts his actors to accomplish ridiculously intricate scenes.

The plot is very compelling, but the way this film is shot makes it incredible.

Smells like “Red Dawn” (Seriousness Level: Severe)

Growing up in the heart of Second Amendment country, a lot of my childhood revolved around guns. Most of my friends hunted; to the point during deer season, students would skip school to hunt. Before the popular appeal of paintball, a group of us would go into the woods, split up into teams, and have a BB gun war. Yes, it’s exactly what you’re thinking. We would wear tons of clothing, no helmets, and shoot each other with small projectiles. Of course we had the rule that you couldn’t shoot above the chest but there’s a reason why they don’t let 12-year-olds serve in the military.

Anyway, all of this contributed to my love of the TBS classic: Red Dawn. Starring the immortal Patrick Swayze, this film takes us to a place where the Communist tag team of the Soviet Union and Cuba decide to invade the US. The story is told from the perspective of a group of high school students, calling themselves the Wolverines, who fight back Rambo style, and take the fight back to the bad guys in the Rocky Mountains. (Side note: Here’s a way to always win the Michigan-Ohio State argument. Just say the kids from Red Dawn would have never called themselves the Buckeyes. Simple as that.) Needless to say, this was my kind of movie.

In the past week, the situation in Iraq has made me think of this movie. Maybe that means I’m an idiot, but here are some random thoughts.

The BBC reports this about the makeup of the insurgents in Iraq:

“Fighters range from former figures in Saddam Hussein's Baath party to Sunni nationalists fearing Shia domination and foreign Islamist fighters who see Iraq as an arena for a global struggle against the West”

So we’re facing two separate enemies. One is a group who is losing their power/control and the other is a radical element of a religious group, who doesn’t want the “Zionists” to control their country. They see this as a struggle that they are willing to give their lives for. The US is allowing protests, holding elections, but none of this addresses how to control the set of the population that doesn’t want our troops or the new government in place.

There are an estimated 17,000 people in the group actively rebelling against the US army in Iraq. This is a group of people that have banned together in an effort to “save their country”. With some politicians and a growing segment of the public demanding a troop withdrawal, I feel that this group will only grow once we “invaders” leave. If the US leaves without a plan for the new Iraqi government to end the insurgency, they will be headed for civil war.

Sorry for the non-conclusive ending. I just wanted to share some thoughts. To put you in a better mood, here is a link to the famous Swayze snot bubble from Red Dawn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWrcvQbb-vM&feature=related