More reviews to come. Temporary Hiatus

S and I are back to school, meaning we may not be reviewing as many movies as we can. We'll try to give you something soon. Be patient. I, Z, have a large collection of VHS tapes and DVDs I can cycle through and pick something to review. Hopefully S and I will be able to get to a theater to give you another conversational style review.
That's all for now
-Z

BOTTLE SHOCK: Review

Last night, on Friday, I had the chance to see a very good film. Bottle Shock.
This film starred Alan Rickman (of Harry Potter fame) and Bill Pulman (of Spaceballs and Independence Day fame).
Here is the basic synopsis from Fandango.com:

"Based on a true story, Bottle Shock chronicles the events leading up to the famous 'Judgment of Paris' tastings, told through the lives of father and son, Jim and Bo Barrett. A former real estate attorney, Jim (Bill Pullman) sacrificed everything to realize his dream of creating the perfect hand-crafted chardonnay. His business, however, is struggling, and he's not only trying to overcome differences with his slacker son (Chris Pine), but is also fighting off the creditors. Meanwhile in Paris, unwitting British wine shop owner Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman) hopes to revive his own failing business by sponsoring a competition which will pit the traditional French powerhouse against the California upstarts. Little did Steven and Jim realize that they were both on course to change the history of wine forever."

Now, my opinion?
Well, lets just say I enjoyed it a lot. In fact, I thought it was simply brilliant. The film was funny, interesting, dramatic, and wine filled. The plot was very stable (seeing how it's a true story) and it kept my interest. Bill Pullman did a good job as a struggling wine maker. He's aged quite a bit and he's a little heavier then he was in older films, but the personality was very good. In the film (not to give to much away) him and the actor Chris Pine (who plays his son) get into many fights more literal then conversational. Whenever they start arguing his son would go "You wanna fight?" and then they are standing in a boxing ring punching each other.
There is a side story of sorts where Bo (Pine) and his friend Gustavo (Freddy Rodriguez) argue over a intern named Sam (Rachael Taylor), but it isn't a major point of the film.
Alan Rickman's performance was probably one of the best I've seen of him. He plays a very snobby shop owner and critic of wine which is perfect role for him. One of my favorite lines of his was "It's not that I'm an ass, it's just that I'm British and you're not". That line cracked me up because it seems like something Alan Rickman would probably say regularly in his life.
Chris Pine was good as Bo Barret, the son of Jim Barret (Pullman). He was pretty much an average teenager who's living in the 70's. He slacked off, drank, and tried to get all the girls.
Rachael Taylor as Sam and Freddy Rodriguez as Gustavo both were excellent actors and although they were relatively minor characters they added a lot to the film.
I don't have much negative things to say, except maybe that the music cut out to soon or didn't fade right with the next scene, but I didn't mind that one bit. Also at the end, for some reason the focus was messed up at some points but that was probably the projector at the theater.
Anyway, in short, I enjoyed the film a lot. I recommend it to anyone who wants to see a good film that most likely didn't have a huge budget and to anyone who loves a fine piece of cinema.
I give it-
4.5/5
Now go out and see it for yourself!

A Summer of Films

As the summer draws to it's end we tend to look at the bigger films that appear in cinemas. Big names like Indiana Jones, Batman, Incredible Hulk. But we frequently ignore the slightly smaller ones.
If I get the chance (depends on how the day goes) I may get to see a smaller budget film that is not having a big release.
Bottle Shock
It stars some big names like Alan Rickman (best known for his portrayal as Professor Snape in Harry Potter or the sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood) and Bill Pulman (known for his roles like Lone Starr in the comedy Spaceballs).
This film originally aired at the Sundance Film Festival, but is coming to select theaters.
I will definitely review it when I see it.
-Z
:D

WALL-E: The Review

Unlike my friend Z, I don't have anything to rant about with this movie (but don't worry, I'll have plenty to rant about later). Now, while it may be rated G, I still enjoyed this movie. But before I get to my personal opinion, here's a short synopsis from MovieTickets.com:

"After hundreds of lonely years of doing what he was built for, WALL-E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) discovers a new purpose in life (besides collecting knick-knacks) when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE. EVE comes to realize that WALL-E has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet's future, and races back to space to report her findings to the humans (who have been eagerly awaiting word that it is safe to return home). Meanwhile, WALL-E chases EVE across the galaxy and sets into motion one of the most exciting and imaginative comedy adventures ever brought to the big screen. Joining WALL-E on his fantastic journey across a universe of never-before-imagined visions of the future, is a hilarious cast of characters including a pet cockroach, and a heroic team of malfunctioning misfit robots."

A very fitting synopsis, I'd say. For anyone out there who thinks you have to be either a kid or a sucker for kids' movies to like this movie, I'd disagree. Personally, I'm not very into kids' movies (not like I was when I was little; you should see my movie collection). But I enjoyed this movie because it's cute, not cheesy. There weren't any puns or anything like that. In fact, the robots couldn't say much besides their own names.

When the movie starts, we find the last WALL-E unit, a robot designed to clean up all the junk on Earth while the humans go away on a giant spaceship-- sort of like a space cruise. Sadly, the earth is still covered in junk, and WALL-E is still working away, trying to clean it up while collecting items he finds interesting. Compared to the other high-tech robots on the spaceship, he seems to be junk himself, but that's part of what makes him so cute. That, and the fact that he falls in love with EVE (who he refers to as "Eva"). I mean, come on, robots falling in love in a Disney Pixar movie? It's insane amounts of cute.

In the spaceship, we also encounter MO, a small robot who cleans any "foreign contaminants." For most of the movie, he's just cleaning up the trail of dirt that WALL-E leaves everywhere he goes (something that seems to frustrate MO). WALL-E also meets defective, psycho robots who help him as he invades the ship. Oh, and all the humans became lazy and fat, did I mention that? They all hover around in chairs and drink these shakes, and it's all really high-tech.

If you don't appreciate a good, wholesome movie, then don't waste your time watching this. But if you do, and you're ready to laugh, go "Awwww" several times, and possibly tear up a bit (I almost did), I'd suggest WALL-E for you.

Rating: 4 stars

-S

They made it into a movie: Super Mario Brothers

It didn't really take us by surprise. We all knew that SOMEDAY a movie would be made. Super Mario Brothers is one of the best selling video games. The game already had multiple TV show adaptations, an anime film in Japan, toys, and some manga adaptations as well in Japan. A movie wasn't that big of a surprise. When the day the film was released people filed into the theater. Many kids were ecstatic about seeing there favorite plumbers fighting the evil King Bowser on the big screen. The movie started and the theme song was heard while one of the production company's names was shown. Then the words "A long long time ago the earth was ruled by dinosaurs were heard..." this is where the movie begins to become terrible. That's right...not even five minutes into this film and it's already horrible. The film's plot is as follows: Two Brooklyn plumbers Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi (John Leguizamo) travel to another dimension full of evolved dinosaurs to save a princess named Daisy (Samantha Mathis) from the evil tyrant President Koopa (Dennis Hopper). Okay, so here are some problems with this plot.
1) They have Mario and Luigi not as brothers but as father and adopted son (technically).
2) They cast Dennis Hopper as Koopa
3) Koopa is human.
4) No Princess Peach, instead there's Princess Daisy who was only in spin-off games and Super Mario Land.
and there are so many things as well.
One big problem is the whole dinosaur plot. The original Mario brothers was about two brothers who fought mushroom monsters in the Mushroom Kingdom.
They do at point reference this by Koopa telling Daisy's father (who's a gigantic collection of fungus) that he can "choke this mushroom kingdom all you want". What do we get as city? How about the name "Dinohatten"? Dumb enough for you?
The goombas look like small headed lizard people on steroids. They look nothing like the original mushroom-esque goombas...you know what? I think I released something, they seemed to take the whole mushroom aspect of the film (besides leaving the fungus father keeping his eye on the city) and swapped it with dinosaurs.
Another disappointing thing is the acting, it's absolutely dreadful at times. Bob Hoskins is probably the best actor, but John Leguizamo delivers some of the worst lines. Dennis Hopper as well.
Another big problem I find is all the "lizard jokes" related toward the Dinohatten people. I find this to be a problem because dinosaurs really don't share a single bit of relationship with common reptiles. So, it's like the people who made this film completely missed their evolution classes.
The movie really disappointed me, but that didn't stop me from buying it on DVD. I wanted it for the novelty factor (same reason I bought E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600). The DVD itself upsets me. It has absolutely no special features. No behind the scenes, no missing scenes, no easter eggs, no bloopers, nothing. It's depressing.
Overall the film is terrible. If you're still interested then pick it up, but beware it's terribleness.

My rating? 1.5/5, maybe a 1.2/5
It's that bad.

More rants coming up!
-Z

They made it into a movie: Doom rant.

Okay, so back in 1993 there were many video games. However there was one game that stood among the rest. This game is Doom. Doom stood out mainly because it was a FPS, or First Person Shooter, and not just any FPS a good one. Now, Doom wasn't the first FPS but it did make a major impact on the genre. Now like anything that is very good a movie adaption closely followed. In 2005 "Doom: The Movie" was released in cinemas. It was based off the three games Doom, Doom 2 and Doom 3 (though the movie is more based off of Doom 3). To sum up the plot of the film, monsters break loose in a research facility on Mars and marines must shoot them. So, it's a gory monster/zombie/horror/sci-fi film. It stars The Rock as "Sarge" and Karl Urban as "Reaper" (aka the Doomguy from the original games). This movie, even though the games were given amazingly good reviews, did poorly at the box office and then bombed. Now, my rant isn't about how bad the Doom movie is, or anything like that. Instead, I want to ask WHY people think it's bad? I mean, come on? How can you make a really good film about a portal to hell opening on a facility on Mars? Sure, sounds like a decent plot, but think of the gameplay. The entire game you are running around killing monsters. There really isn't any cut scenes in the original game and the main character wasn't even named! The movie did us a favor by naming him and giving a little more depth and interesting aspects to the plot. The original guy had one guy fighting the entire armies of hell... The movie tried to be more realistic by adding an entire group of people, each person with a different personality. Another problem that critics saw was the whole sequence where the movie is in FPS view (i.e. it feels like you yourself is walking down the hallways blasting monsters heads off). Some people found it to be almost mocking the game. Personally, I liked it, and thought it was pretty interesting. I do admit though, the plot did have one big dramatic change. The original Doom was about demons from hell breaking loose, this movie was about monsters coming from a virus. I think this was definitely a dumb thing the directors/writers did. The whole "monster virus" thing has been used many times in horror films, but I can see why the changed it. Most likely religious groups would have tried to get the movie censored or blocked from cinemas do to the whole part about hell and demons, so to avoid this mess the writers obviously opted for a virus turning people into monsters.
This movie was in my opinion half way decent for a film. Not 5/5 or even 4/5. But definitly a 3.5/5 or 3/5.
This film was definitely better then my next rant...
You'll just have to wait for that one.