Naked Hobo

In New York, when the shy and lonely project manager of a design firm Matt Saunders meets Jenny Johnson in the subway, he invites her to date and have dinner with him. Jenny immediately falls in love for him, they have sex and she discloses her true identity to him, telling that she is the powerful superhero G-Girl. After meeting his co-worker and friend Hannah Lewis, the needy Jenny becomes jealous, controlling and manipulative, and Matt follows the advice of his best friend Vaughn Haige and dumps her, breaking her heart. Jenny turns Matt’s life into hell, while he has a romance with Hannah. However, the archenemy of G-Girl and former high school sweetheart of Jenny, Professor Bedlam, proposes Matt to lure Jenny to strip her superpowers.  IMDB

After seeing this I really hope there are some super ex-film executives.  I didn’t have very high hopes for it, and yet I was still disappointed.  It really wasn’t very funny and even some great comedic talent, like Eddie Izzard and Rainn Wilson were big letdowns.  Not really their fault, the script was awful.  I’m just glad that this was free, 1 axe.

I’m not going to bother with a plot summary of the film, if you don’t already know about Batman and the Joker, why are you even reading my blog.  Batman is good, Joker is evil, and crazy, and deformed.  So, on to the actual film.

This was a great flick.  It was by no means perfect, but I am beginning to think that perfection in a film is really hard to come by when one is talking about super heroes and comic book characters.  There is always going to be something that is going to be too absurd, or predicatble.  I mean, we can’t have Batman dying, Hollywood would never allow for something like that.

Heath Ledger as the Joker.  He really made the role his own, or maybe the role made Heath its own.  Finally we have a villian that is really worthy of having Batman as his nemesis.  No silly, goofy Joker with dumb makeup.  This is a truly evil and maniacal bad guy.  Nothing goofy or silly, even when he’s wearing a dress.  I think this role is the new bar for how good a villian can be.  It is sad that Heath had to go out, but his final performance will be a memorable one.  Of course if he wins the Oscar there will always be that bit of doubt, did he win because he really deserved it, or did he get some sympathy votes because he died.  We will never know for sure, and to many it won’t ever matter.

I like Christian Bale, and he makes a very good Batman, the best one yet.  He does as good as he can with the role.  Batman is not an Oscar caliber role.  You just need to talk kind of gravely and look good in black.  Bale does fine with what he is given, which for an actor of his talents isn’t really all that much. Still, he is Batman, he acts how Batman should act.

This was better than “Batman Begins”.  The story is better, the villian is better, nothing against Liam Neeson, it was the character not the actor.  And, no Katie Holmes, which is super.  It is good to see that comic movies can be made well, 4 axes.

A romantic comedy set against the backdrop of America’s nascent pro-football league in 1925. Dodge Connolly, a charming, brash football hero, is determined to guide his team from bar brawls to packed stadiums. But after the players lose their sponsor and the entire league faces certain collapse, Dodge convinces a college football star to join his ragtag ranks. The captain hopes his latest move will help the struggling sport finally capture the country’s attention. Welcome to the team Carter Rutherford, America’s favorite son. A golden-boy war hero who single-handedly forced multiple German soldiers to surrender in WWI, Carter has dashing good looks and unparalleled speed on the field. This new champ is almost too good to be true, and Lexie Littleton aims to prove that’s the case. A cub journalist playing in the big leagues, Lexie is a spitfire newswoman who suspects there are holes in Carter’s war story. But while she digs, the two teammates start to become serious off-field rivals for her fickle affections. As the new game of pro-football becomes less like the freewheeling sport he knew and loved, Dodge must both fight to keep his guys together and to get the girl of his dreams. Finding that love and football have a surprisingly similar playbook, however, he has one maneuver he will save just for the fourth quarter.  IMDB

That summary sounds like a delightful movie.  I wish that was the one I saw.  I know that this was supposed to be light hearted fun, but I just couldn’t get into it.  First, I won’t dwell too much on the sheer farce this movie is when it comes to history.  Being Hollywood they had to add at least one black guy to the cast, even though no team had black players and it would have been a rare white guy that would have played on a team with one.  Also, no way a football player would have made as much money as these guys did, it was using modern mentality about football to tell a story from 80 years ago.

I also won’t dwell too much of miss squishy face, Renee Zellweger.  Clooney is his typical self, it is a character I am getting a little tired of.  Can he play anything other than the smarmy guy?  No one wowed me in this, the acting was just kinda blah, been there, done that.

Even the football scenes were pretty dull.  I’m not expecting some non-stop highlight clip show, but make me at least interested in the game, especially if you aren’t going to interest me with the movie.  I can see why this didn’t do very well at the box office, 1 axe.

Ami is a typical college girl. She’s bright, friendly, popular and athletic, with nothing to set her apart from other girls her age other than the fact that she is an orphan, left to care for her younger brother after her father committed suicide after being falsely accused of murder. But while there is tragedy in their past, the siblings’ future looks good, except for one thing. Ami’s brother has racked up a considerable debt to another boy at school, and that boy just happens to be the heir to a clan of vicious ninja-yakuza. Ami’s brother can’t pay, violence breaks out and in the course of trying to avenge her brother, Ami is captured by the clan. They torture her and hack her arm right off. Ami escapes, barely alive, and is taken in by the owners of a machine shop who build her a customized, bullet-spewing arm. From that point, the quest for revenge is on in earnest.  IMDB

This movie was terrible in regards to acting, plot, and effects.  However, the gore is astronomical.  So, that of course cancels out all the bad stuff.  This movie is a project in the ridiculous.  Everything is so over the top and so unbelievable that is was hysterical to watch.  Of course, movies that have girls with machine guns for a hand do not tend towards realism and deep human drama.  They tend towards the extreme, which this movie does incredibly well.  I am not going to say it is great, nor would I say it is for everyone.  But, if you like gore along the lines of a “Dead Alive” then this could be your movie, based on what I was expecting going in, 3 1/2 axes, based solely as a film 1 1/2 axes.  It is its own thing, it is hard to pin down.

Set in Baroque France, a scheming widow and her lover make a bet regarding the corruption of a recently married woman. The lover, Valmont, bets that he can seduce her, even though she is an honorable woman. If he wins, he can have his lover to do as he will. However, in the process of seducing the married woman, Valmont falls in love.  IMDB

For me, Colin Firth really made this movie.  I have never been a big fan of Annette Benning, for some reason she just rubs me the wrong way.  Firth was dazzling as Valmont, I think he really made the role his own.  Having never read the book the film is based on, nor having seen “Dangerous Liasons” helped me view the movie with a fresh perspective.  Plus this one doesn’t have a certain Mr. Reeves in it, so it already gets an axe just for that.  This is a story that has been told many times though, aside from these movies, “Cruel Intentions” is also the same story.  While the film is good, and the acting by the majority of the cast is good, it just didn’t grab me though.  As I said, Firth was fun to watch, but other than that I wasn’t really drawn in by the film, 2 1/2 axes.

In 1965, while bombing Laos in a classified mission, the plane of the German-American pilot Dieter Dengler is hit and crashes in the jungle. Dieter is arrested by the peasants, tortured and sent to a prisoner camp, where he meets five other mentally ill prisoners. He becomes close to Duane and organizes an escape plan; however, the unstable Gene opposes to Dieter’s plan. When they discover that there is no more food due to the constant American bombings in the area and their guards intend to kill them, Dieter sets his plan in motion. However, an unexpected betrayal split the group and Dieter and Duane find that the jungle is their actual prison.  IMDB

Another  movie based of real life events.  The movie does play loose with the actual facts, and many people associated with the real life events had some harsh citicism for Herzog and the film in general.  That aside, this is an alright film.  Christian Bale does a good enough job as the upbeat Dieter and the supporting cast is just fine.  I do like that they had some of the inmates shave, whether or not they even did for real.  There comes a point in many POW type movies where you can’t tell the actors apart, everyone ends up a bushy faced, shaggy haired mammoth.

The movie does move a bit slowly and I was bored here and there.  This is by no means an action type POW movie like the old Braddock films with the father of all bearded tough guys.  It is a human story about how one man can remain positive and fight to overcome what appears to be a hopeless situation.  Unfortunately it is a little too polished I think, it needed to be a little more rough around the edges, 3 axes.

You may have thought, wow movie 100, bet he pulls out all the stops.  Nope, just an innocent little feel good flick with Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman.  Nothing huge like Quantum of Solace or anything like that, just a ho-hum flick about the magic inside each and every one of us.  But, I digress.

Molly Mahoney is the awkward and insecure manager of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, the strangest, most fantastic, most wonderful toy store in the world. But when Mr. Magorium, the 243 year-old eccentric who owns the store, bequeaths the store to her, a dark and ominous change begins to take over the once remarkable Emporium.  IMDB

Well, what can I say about a movie that makes the adorable Portman look like a 12 year old boy for the bulk of it.  If this movie was made for kids, I can see why it was a failure.  There reallly isn’t a whole lot going on and it can quickly become boring as it seems the film drags on a bit too long.  Sure, a few of the scenes in the store may entertain for a brief moment or two, and if there was a strong enough story otherwise it could have been a good movie.  Instead, it is just a fair film with a sappy message that has been done a billion times already.  Life is what you make of it or there is something special inside just waiting to get out, or any other way you want to phrase it.  I just don’t think 90 minutes was the right amount of time to tell us that, could have been done in about 10 and been a fine short film.

Dustin, as Magorium, plays the eccentric quite well.  His lisping voice does get a bit annoying at times, but it suits the character well enough.  Portman as the store manager that is really the block of wood, not the block of wood, make any sense, proably not, much like this sentence, kinda runs on, has too many commas, violates a whole bunch of grammatical rules, and realy does nothing to contribute to the post, is androgynous and under-utilized.  The wardrobe choices for her made her looking frumpy and dull, and the Portman’s greatest strentgh after her acting ability is her smile.  She has a smile that lights up her face, and we almost never got to see it, and if we did her atrocious haircut ruined everything.  Hmm, a bit catty I, oh well.  Then there is the kid and Bateman.  They were there, they did fine jobs, just nothing all that memorable about either performance.

Unless you want to see some balls bounce on their own, hear Hoffman lisp about life, and find out what it is like when a magic toy store throws a temper tantrum, you can skip this film.  It isn’t bad, just not really necessary for you to watch, 2 axes.