Category: Reviews

Now with added yellow penis! (How was that for a magical cinematic moment? Pretty good, I thought.)

Very much like a really good episode on TV but longer and … wider.

I’m sure you’ve already seen it, So let’s cut this sho-

Everyone but the most irrational frothing-at-the-mouth Michael Moore fanboy already thinks that he’s a bit of a tool. This documentary goes to great lengths to illustrate just how gigantic his toolhood really is.

When you get into these spin vs. counter-spin fights, it very quickly gets difficult to tell who still has any credibility, and to be honest I don’t know if the filmmakers here do have a great deal. Who are they? Who financed their movie? (“Mostly Canadian Financiers” doesn’t actually mean anything.) Do they really expect me to believe the claim that they intended to make a straight story about Moore, only to discover that everyone hated him? I for one certainly don’t believe this, I reckon they made the exact movie they planned to make – a concerted attack from beginning to end.

Perhaps it’s a cruel misjudgement of their character, perhaps they really are just pinkos who like Moore’s message but don’t like his methods. Perhaps they’re the good guys… It just seems to me that pretending that they were lefty fans when they started is such an incredibly useful marketing gimmick, it’s almost too good to be true.

It’s also kind of obvious, like the big fat credulous idiot archetype we all know and love spouting off some garbage on a C-grade made for TV alien-expose ‘documentary’ like “I’m the biggest skeptic you ever met, so believe me when I say it changed my life to be confronted by the Burhobbit while I was innocently videoing rods and UFOs and government black helicopters”, because that person isn’t skeptical at all, they only said they were so you’d believe their lies.

Everyone already knows that Moore uses the same tactics as the right-wingers, he’s the Fox News of the left. He’s full of spin and half truths and careful editing. But so what? He makes very interesting and entertaining documentaries.

The woman who kept trying to interview him – I guess she was Debbie Melnyk, producer/director/writer – was utterly useless. So completely wet I can completely understand why Moore didn’t want to speak with her. (However, I believe he knew something was up, and that is the real reason he didn’t speak with her. If I was in his position and knew someone was making 90 minutes of documentary attacking me, would I want to speak with them? It’s very hard to say. He knows as well as anyone that it doesn’t matter how well he presents himself in an interview, they can edit it until he looks like a complete creep.)

Some of the interview subjects were interesting and illuminating – I didn’t know about Moore’s career before he made Roger and Me, I still don’t care about it, but it was interesting to see him as a thin dude. (He chocked on the pounds fast.)

Not only is Michael Moore astonishingly fat, but he’s also a giant prick. So he lies and spins and takes quotes out of context? So what! Let’s not pretend that we didn’t already know this.

Do I recommend people watch this doco? If the choice is between this and the abovementioned dross about The Military-Industrial-Martian complex, watch this. If the choice is between this and Sicko, though, choose Sicko – it’s some seriously compelling filmmaking, the likes of which the makers of Manufacturing Dissent can only dream of making.

But whatever you watch, whoever it was made by, don’t be gulled. Not by either side of the argument, you credulous damned fool. No one tells the whole truth, they only tell the truth that makes them look good. Don’t forget this at any time.

Highly rated and extremely popular documentary about a lock of Beethoven’s hair that was cut from his day old corpse, and then made it’s way through the years to a pair of Beethoven enthusiast/collectors who proceed to have it scientifically tested in order to unlock (teehee) some of the secrets of his life and death.

The scheduled two sessions sold out so quickly that they put on a third showing. To be honest I don’t entirely understand the fuss, I didn’t think it was particularly well made, and I don’t really think it’s up to the standard of other Film Festival documentaries I watched this year. The recreations were rubbish, and it looked like it was all shot on too low a budget. Some of the speakers were very interesting, and the story itself is an interesting one, but I think they just missed the mark slightly.

A little disappointing.

No Mercy for the Rude is the story of a mute orphan who grows up to be a master vegetable slicer, then discovers that to afford an operation to fix his tongue, he needs to become a stylish poet-hitman with an obsession for matadors and the only girl that was nice to him at the orphanage. It’s quite a funny movie, but it also features rather a lot of knife murders and splashing blood, and bad haircuts (I’m looking at you helmet-hair!). Also, hotsecks and ballet knife fights.

Little did I know that I’d previously a seen a movie by the same (Korean) director & lead actor, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance – if I had realised I probably wouldn’t have seen this one, Mr Vengeance was the boring, slow, and somewhat incoherant tale of a deaf guy who tries to get money to pay for his sisters surgery, but ends up with everyone around him dead, and then killed himself. This time up, they take the crazy, and they take the defects, and they make something quite interesting.

I don’t think many retards read my site (anymore), but if there are any of you out there running your finger alone the lines of text trying to decipher the meaning of words like ‘hilarity’ or ‘hotsecks’, this isn’t a movie for you. (i.e. Subtitles.)

I thought it was good.

Another Jason Statham action movie, released in cinemas late last year, and coming to DVD any day now.

Crank sees Statham’s character Chev (a low life hitman, trying to get out of the game to be with his dizzy/hot girlfriend Eve) poisoned with a slow acting Chinese-made synthetic toxin, the only remedy?  Adrenaline.  Oh, also every pill he can get his hands on, cocaine off a bar toilet floor, a hefty dose of Red Bull product placement, lots of shooting and bare-assed-hospital-gown-police-motorcycle-jacking, and high-speed car chasing through a mall, blow job (no happy ending) while being pursued by crazy Latino gangsters shooting the hell out of his girlfriend’s car fun.

Plenty of great characters, but I especially liked Dwight Yoakam as Statham’s doctor.

Much better than Statham’s 2002 vehicle The Transporter (the longest BMW commercial you’ll ever see), but perhaps that isn’t saying much.  If you can’t completely suspend your disbelief, you’ll hate it. 

Definitely low brow.  Definitely a good time.  Definitely urinary sphincter.

Now with added ( o Y o ).

Starring John Cena, The Marine is being released in cinemas March 1st, probably to close again by about the 4th.  If I’d bothered to check iMDB, which rated this stinker 4.2 out of 10, before watching my "review copy", I never would have bothered with this awful movie.

You see, this is a WWE movie, and John Cena is a professional wrestler.  (He actually does a good acting job, considering – not nearly as wooden as you might expect, but this is faint praise indeed.)

The only even remotely good thing about it was Anthony Ray Parker’s role as a psychopathic criminal, and he only counts as a good thing because #1 his character’s name is Morgan and #2 he lived and worked in NZ for such a long time.

Really just don’t.  I’m not kidding.   Not even if it’s free.