Category: Movies

The thing about movies based on Stephen King stories is that they’re all over the place, one year we have The Green Mile, The Shining, or Shawshank Redemption, and another we have Maximum Overdrive or Sleepwalkers. So you just don’t know what you’re going to get, right?

Anyway, this one isn’t one of the stinkers.

It certainly helps that John Cusack takes the role, I really do like him. Which is a good thing, if you took 10 random seconds out of the movie, chances are better than even that every one of them would feature him, by himself, in a hotel room.

It’s all about the hotel room, you see. Indeed, the hotel room is the titular 1408 (1 + 4 + 0 + 8 = 13), also there’s no level 13 in the building – the elevator goes from 12 – 14, so this is, in fact, on the 13th floor.

John Cusack is Mike Enslin – and here’s a shock for you, the male lead in a Stephen King story, dun dun dunnnnn: is a writer. Mostly writing about haunted hotel rooms and so on, which finally leads him to the Dolphin Hotel in New York, where they really, really don’t want to let him take room 1408. (Usually, you see, the proprietor is gagggging to get him into one of their “haunted rooms”, so this is an unusual start.)

When he finally gets into the room, the Japanese girls sitting behind me in the theatre go into fucking overdrive. I don’t blame them. Shit got scary in no time flat.

Die in a fire you creepy goddamn alarm clock!

Anyway, I thought it was good and scary. It made my skin prick and my hair stand on end. (Shut-up)

If you want a good scare, I reckon you should take your favourite girl (or guy) to this movie, then you can snuggle up close when it gets too scary. It’ll be a good time. Promise.

P.S. You are here.

Viggo Mortensen putting in a pretty convincing performance as a Russian gangster in London.

Dude goes balls out, and I meant that entirely literally – if you’ve ever wanted to see Viggo’s skinny bare ass, or his dick & balls, this is the movie for you. (I hadn’t ever wanted to, but in context it wasn’t exploitative – it’s not a hot scene.)

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie that was so graphically, realistically, disturbingly violent. Where other movies would cut away to a face shot, we instead see the bolt cutters grinding through flesh and bone, and cutting off fingers, or razor blades being forcefully sawed back and forth, cutting through a throat.

Punches are not pulled.

Even if it isn’t all good, it’s still an exceptional piece of film making.

Actors wanting to learn how to project a palpable air of menacing power, violence held in check but ready to go at a moments notice, without screaming and shouting and putting on scowling and gravelly voices, would do well to pay close attention to Mortensen’s work in this role.

There was at least one scene which seemed to have the entire theatre (which was full of Russians, for obvious reason) shocked to the point of holding our collective breaths. Followed by a long release, with the odd nervous laugh from various around the room. Truly intense.

It’s quite something, if you have a strong stomach, you should see it.

I like: hot women, science fiction, zombies. Roll them all up together and what do you get? That’s right: Resident Evil.

This is the third in the Resident Evil series (so far?). Now, what’s the normal rule of sequels? Who cares! This is by far the best of the bunch.

Everything is fucked. Everyone is dead. Well, practically. There are a few Umbrella complexes operating around the world, there are a few stragglers out in the wild, running to live. It’s been years since everything went to shit… And as it turns out, the zombies don’t need to eat to live (they just like human flesh a lot, go figure) so they’re going to be around for decades. It turns out that the virus that causes the zombieism also affects other animals, and even plants… So the entire world is turning to desert.

So, like I said, everything is fucked.

But Alice is still alive, and she has guns.

It’s brutal, visceral, violent. You know how in some movies you get scared? You jump, and maybe feel a little embarassed, so perhaps you try to take a different posture in your seat to hide the inevitable next jump. Maybe you get so scared of the music building up to a climax that you even go as far as looking off to one side of the screen, as if peripheral vision will save you from being eaten.

This is totally one of those movies.

And – with the given caveat that it is a horror/zombie/scifi movie – it’s really very good.

Great performances, with returning roles for characters from the previous movies, and the introduction of that crazy-hot and plain crazy MPD chick from Heroes, as well as a small group of others. (Including some who get their just desserts with cherries on top.)

(Karl, I’m sure you already are, but you have to avoid this one like the plague.)

Everyone else will dig it.

Yeah, I know. What was I even thinking?

It was the biggest seller at the box office for the last 6 weeks running, and I wanted to see what was going on. Now, I’m not going to say that everyone else in the theatre was an idiot, but let’s say they were easily amused and just leave it at that.

Pro: Some of the music was alright; the stuff in the taxi (and some of the taxi driver’s scenes in general); the outtakes in the credits were funny. The incredibly hot Asian girl sitting next to me. Man, she’d make just sitting in a silent theatre fun.
Con: Everything else. It’s certainly no City Hunter or Drunken Master.

New Zealand made vampire movie. I was going to say ‘distinctly New Zealand’, but the truth is… well, that it’s not entirely true. Sure, in a market scene we see a kuia selling eels from a barrel, and yes it’s set in a made-up country called Nuovo Zelandia. But. None of the major characters is played by a New Zealander – they’re all from the bloody UK.

Set in a grimy, runny-nosed sweat-house of a dystopian alternate past – one in which genetics/dna was discovered in the 17th century, or thereabouts, which was a lucky thing for the vampires which were discovered around the same time – instead of being feared and hunted out of existence, they were instead recognised as a simple mutation/evolution of normal humans. There’s a certain steampunkness (a grimy version, as opposed to the polished brass and oiled wood kind) about it with steam powered cars existing alongside DNA display screens and stun-gun billy-clubs.

The story is reasonably straightforward, in this universe vampires don’t eat people – non-vampires provide them with blood freely, and seem to like doing it – but then one vampire is infected by a virus that instills the desire to kill and eat people. The other vampires, and some people who happen to be in-the-know, can see that if the knowledge of this gets out, the general population will be unhappy, so they have to stop him.

It features a fair bit of distinctly average CG, and something about either the editing or film transfer process wasn’t quite right, some of the faster moving action is rendered entirely unintelligible.

Althought it misses the mark in several respects, the performances were generally pretty good, and on the whole I found it to be better than I expected. If you’re a New Zealander, you really are kind of obligated to support our fledgling film industry. So go see it.

There was no buzz about this movie at all. But it fell onto my (actually surprisingly long) list of ‘movies to see’ when I saw the trailer, you see I quite like the idea of people sorting shit out. Washing the filth off the streets, and so on.

Anyway, our radio show host and heroine (anti-heroine even? Anyway, Jodie Foster) is sickeningly lovey dovey with her hot English fiance, then he gets beaten to death, and she gets beaten to the brink of death. She recovers physically, more or less, but emotionally she’s very badly damaged (never mind the loss of her lover, she lost the trust of the city she loved – New York).

Her emotional damage is patched up, to her surprise, when she gets a big fuck off gun. Her confidence returns when the killing starts.

I don’t want to give away too much of the story, but let’s just say that there’s a good cop on the case, and they play a bit of cat-and-mouse.

Strongly recommended to all.

P.S. Jodie foster has nice ( o Y o )s.

I only made it along to catch this one on the second day of general release, the theatre was nearly empty. Doesn’t bode well for box office earnings, or a long season in theatres. (Though I’m sure that even if theatre takings don’t pay back their measly budget, DVD and international earnings should push them well into the black – if they aren’t already there.)

Hugely enjoyable, riddled with in-jokes that no-one outside NZ will even notice (All the Te Puke gags, the Bruno Lawrence Studios, and so on) to make us feel special, and awesomely retarded from beginning to end.

It’s a lock to join the hallowed halls of cult classic Kiwi cinema. I guarantee it.

I can’t help but think that actor/director/writer team Stapp & Heath could benefit from a bit of mentoring from a more experienced filmmaker/writer. They need to focus their ideas just a little more. They’re already reasonably successful, considering their obvious disabilities (gigantic balls, fantastic retardation), sharpening things up a bit more – without giving up their charm – should be able to make them a bit more accessible and evenly enjoyable.

If you were a fan of Back of the Y, you’ll love the hell out of this. If you have testicles, you will squirm and wince. If you’re a woman, you’ll wonder just what the hell is going on – and indeed, even as a non-woman, I do have some questions about the treatment of women in this film. You see, every woman ends up horribly burnt and dismembered. Sure, some of the guys suffer some nasty injuries, even a few good rapings – but all of the women end up dead. I think someone might need some therapy.

I have a lot of respect for these guys – even if I am perhaps a little critical – they’ve managed to make TV and movies just the way they wanted, they just do it. And it impresses the hell out of me – they also seem to be good guys, though I don’t know Stapp, I worked with Matt Heath at ihug, always very friendly, with an easy smile. So there you go.

If you haven’t seen it, do. We need to support New Zealand film making, even dodgy-as-hell, violent-as-fuck, crazy asploding New Zealand filmmaking. You’d better get your toddle on though, as I can’t imagine it’s going to be in theatres very long.

You’ll hate it or you’ll love it, and either way I’m sure you’ll get at least a few good hearty laughs out of it.

You know what they say, sometimes you go splode, and sometimes you make other guy go splode. This movie is about a very big splosion – at a softball game played in, of all places, frickin’ Saudi Arabia. So yeah maybe asking for it? Short answer: no they weren’t. And when a high achiever FBI guy manages to finagle his way into the country, progress is made on tracking down the murdering thugs that perpetrated the killing.

This film is grim, extremely violent, and has a surprising message about where all this terrorism has ‘suddenly’ come from. (Well, perhaps not surprising for non-Americans, and sadly odds on that any American audience members that didn’t already have some idea about the history of the middle east, and just where all these complete insane murderous Islamic extremists sprang up from, will grin dumbly at all the loud noises and flashing lights as the actual message flys directly overhead.)

All that said, it is clearly a blockbuster style of movie, so very easy to enjoy as nothing more than an action movie. Be warned that it does suffer a bit from shaken-camera-syndrome, which is just so damn prevalent these days – it works well to convey a particlar feel to a scene, so I don’t blame the filmmakers. But.

Jamie Foxx puts in a fine performance as the lead FBI guy, as does Ashraf Barhoum his Saudi police officer. Surprise, surprise, but Jennifer Garner looks like she’s going to break into tears the whole time, what is it with that girl’s face?

If you don’t mind your entertainment to include a few dead children or hot women with asploded legs, I think you’ll probably like it a great deal. I know I was surprised by how good I found it to be. So let’s just say ‘recommended’ shall we?

Let me start by saying that if dick jokes, constant swearing, and endless boy talk about ‘pounding the vag’ aren’t your idea of funny, you’ll hate the fucking shit out of this movie.

I was completely in my element.

The story of a day in the life of three high school kids, as they go about preparing to make an impression (well, hook up with girls) at the last party of their last year in high school before heading off to college. The boy actors (ages 24, 19, and 17, but still boys in my book) are all completely awesome, I’m sure you’ll recognise Michael Cera from Arrested Development, the fat guy Jonah Hill (40 Year Old Virgin, Click, I Heart Huckabees, and so on) and awesome neeeeeeerrrd Christopher Mintz-Plasse (from nothing, but I’m sure he’ll be a character actor in a bunch of other movies now, he was really good).

I don’t want to drop any spoilers, but… McLovin (AKA Fogell, the nerd) not only gets some with a cute ginge, but he finishes off his night by shooting the shit out of a police car and watching it burn. Seth (the fat kid) gets hit by two cars, gives a girl a black eye, and has a sweaty manlove experience in a basement. And our boy Evan wins the girl (Becca AKA Martha MacIsaac, and I don’t mind telling you I thought she was hawt).

Ok, so I guess I did want to drop spoilers after all.

With lines like: Jules “You scratch our backs, we’ll scratch yours.” Seth “Well Jules, the funny thing about my back is that it’s located on my cock.”
There was just no way I wouldn’t enjoy this movie. Ok, that’s not true. There were ways. But it didn’t do any of them!

(Squirting blood bottle fight!)

The cops are great (one of whom is Superbad co-writer Seth Rogan), the boys are great, it’s all funny, and it all ends well. (Yeah, that’s another spoiler, it’s not like I gave away that the nerd died at the beginning and was a ghost for the whole rest of the movie. Oh wait.)

As long as you pay attention to my caveat – dick jokes, swearing, vag – I urge you to go see this movie, though judging by friends that have seen it, Superbad seems to be a bit polarising.

(However, I would just like to point out that after over 35,000 votes have been cast on IMDB, this sucker still has an 8.3 out of 10, which is bloody good.) (Man, I’m going crazy with parentheses lately, huh?) (Bygones.)