The Joneses | Review

This film is so fucking awesome.. I just wished it ended better.

So remember how a few months back I loved a movie called Daybreakers for it's original concept but was let down by a conventional, less inspiring ending? Well that's how I feel about them Joneses here. Don't get me wrong, this is still a pretty amazing movie, it just wasn't good enough.

So the film is about Joneses, a seemingly perfect, happy, upscale family who moves into a suburban neighborhood and slowly begins to have an effect on the community. They drive the latest cars, they have the latest gadgets, the wear the trendiest clothes and soon after, the neighbors start to follow their trend. But the Joneses ain't no ordinary family. They're a group of actors hired by an advertising company to pose as a happy family to influence people to buy their lifestyle. And let the wacky insueeeee!

I love the concept of this film. I love it. I love it. I love it. The film completely eviscerates the American dream Arthur Miller style, evoking the emptiness and loneliness of a life built solely on consumerism. And you watch this and laugh at how stupid these people are for being so easily influenced by the Joneses but the truth is we are all like that. I admit it, I buy shit I don't need cause a cool dude with a hot chick has them to.

David Duchovny is back baby! Damn I miss his X-Files days. Duchovny plays the charming newcomer to the family struggling internally with his ethics and increasing infatuation with his boss Demi Moore. I love Duchovny's style of comedy, very Ty Burrel-like, choosing to play out his funny scenes in subtle awkward, yet charming performances that will catch a lot of people off-guard. Demi Moore was fantastic in this. Not since The Hunchback of Notre Dame has she had a character that is both the hot cocktease and the woman in control. While I did prefer Duchovny to her, she was excellently cast to be his "love interest".

The Jones kids weren't that awesome. Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth were kinda typecast to be one-dimensional characters who only know how to subliminally sell luxury products. But they were given a lot to do in the film, they just didn't take full opportunity of it. By the way, Amber Heard gets stark ass naked in this and it was heaven.

But The Joneses gets derailed midway when the writers decided they weren't going to continue with the satirical ruse of the movie and opted it to end in the cliche Hollywood love story archetype. It was really disappointing seeing how this movie ended because The Joneses could have been so so so much better than this.

The Joneses isn't a bad film, but it isn't a great film either when it so easily could have been. But it's a film you gotta watch, it's still hella funny, original and has a great message of consumerism. Ending still sucked shit though.

RATING: 6/10

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

The follow-up to the phenom of The Dark Knight finally has a name! MTV reported that Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman film will be called The Dark Knight Rises. I'm not so crazy about the title but I can care less as long as Nolan delivers a finale that does justice to this amazing series.

Oh and Nolan also said in the interview that The Riddler will not be appearing in the film, so Daniel-Day Lewis can kiss his blockbuster dreams goodbye but I'm still hoping for Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin or maybe Black Mask or Killer Croc.

The Dark Knight Rises is slated for a 2012 release. At least we can watch something worthwhile before the world ends.

MacGrubber | Review

This movie is ridiculous. This movie is stupid. And for those two reasons, MacGruber was wonderful!

MacGruber is pretty much Inspector Gadget if it was directed by Jason Freidberg and Aaron Seltzer. I mean this movie is so dumb, so brainless, so fucking lame... that after the film ended I found myself surprisingly loving this film. Huh... weird.

MacGruber is based on the SNL character with Will Forte returning as MacGruber along with Kristen Wig and Ryan Phillipe. So it's about MacGruber, a Zohan-type military expert that retires from his job after his wife was killed by Val Kilmer at their wedding but is beckoned to return to stop him from acquiring codes to a nuclear warhead.

Really, this movie shouldn't be that good, but it was. This is one of those films that are simply critic proof because they know they are making a movie that has a retard as a main character and were written by the lame SNL writers and they make no apology for it. This movie had me bawling in laughter, the grotesque, crude humor that I always shy away from were actually done well. What the fuck am I saying??!!!

I was never a big fan of SNL, their content really started becoming lame bordering on the embarrassing since John Belushi kicked it, but I gotta say, the same lame dialog and slapstick actually work in this. Will Forte as MacGruber will start out as overwhelmingly annoying and unlikable in the beginning of the film but like Sheldon Cooper and Barney Stinson, his character will eventually win you over for his style. Retarded. But style anyway.

The best performance in this was actually Kristen Wig to be honest. While Will Forte was set on being the loud, outlandish, over the top retarded freak, Kristen Wig brings the funny in her trademark subtle, awkward charm. There's a scene in a coffee shop where she's just whispering to the barrister with a face I can't describe and it was the funniest thing I've seen all week. She is one of those actors that I am loving more and more as her filmography grows and I can't wait to see her carry her own movie one day.

Ryan Phillipe I didn't care for so much, his character really got lost under the brilliance of Kristen Wig and loudness of Forte's performance. There wasn't anything bad about it, there just wasn't anything memorable that I can take away from. Phillipe has really hit rock bottom man. He was in Cruel Intentions, Gosford Park, Crash and he was bangin Reese Witherspoon. Now he's a sidekick to a retard SNL actor. This was why Owen Wilson tried to kill himself Ryan. Just giving you the heads up.

With the string of horrid movies we've had this year, it's nice to finally have something that doesn't have to be taken seriously and something to have a lough out loud fun time with. Totally recommended!

RATING: 7/10

Monsters | Review

Monsters. Or District 9: The Boring Version.

But I gotta give this movie credit, it ain't easy to make a beautiful, realistic looking sci-fi movie with a budget of $15,000. This movie looks like a $30 million dollar movie, easy. The only sad thing to this is that Monsters can be summed up in 3 words. Boring & Uneventful.

Monsters takes place in a world 6 after the Earth makes first contact with extraterrestrial life. NASA sent a space probe to Mars to collect alien lifeforms but the probe crashes upon reentry in the Mexican-American border. Now new life forms begin infesting Mexico, prompting the U.S to seal off the border with high walls. And the film follows a journalist who goes to Mexico to escort his bosses really really hot daughter through the infected Mexican zone into the safety of the U.S.

Director Gareth Edwards makes an amazing debut creating an almost Avatar meets Predator-like utopian world where alien and Earth life has fused into a hybrid ecosystem of awesomeness. The cinematography and the visual effects of  Monsters is a feast for the eyes. And when you find out the budget Edwards made this movie for, it gains the crew of the film a whole new level of respect.

But ultimately the biggest fault of Monsters was it's incredibly predictable, lazy and mediocre script. If you saw The Crazies, you've seen Monsters. It's your basic survival movie of, "Oh, we need to get out of this infected zone filled with hostile creatures. We gonna power our way through, encounter creatures here and there, lose tonnes and tonnes of friends on the way and end up in safety and realize we love each other." The plot of the movie has been done so many time and done better so many times, it made me not care for the movie as much.

The pacing of the film is really really bad to. Gareth Edwards needs to fire his editor because the film moves hella slow. We spend a good 30 minutes being introduced to the two main characters before we even start the survival journey through the infected zone. And up to then it does get good awhile but the energy drops to an all low when we reach the final 15 minutes of the film.

Out of the two main characters, only Whitney Able stands out. And not because she's hot. But because at the very least, her character is actually trying to do something other than just walk, look intensely into dark places where a creature might be hiding, run and scream. From what I could understand, her character was in Mexico because she wanted to learn more about the alien creatures (an interesting sub-plot that never gets developed any further than the first 10 minutes of the film) A waste really.

I would have liked Monsters better if they didn't focus the whole plot on the survival aspect and delve more into the story of the monsters, what they are, what they want and stuff like that. Monsters is ultimately and pretty looking, one-dimensional, uninspiring film.

But give Gareth Edwards a bigger budget and a better production team. And let the wonderful alien movies flooooow!

RATING: 5/10

Jonah Hex | Review

My.Brain.Can.Literally.Explode.From.The.Shittyness.Of.This.Movie.

First of... Josh Brolin is wearing a vagina on his face. Second.. this movie makes Wild Wild West look like a western epic. Thank God I didn't pay for this movie.

Jonah Hex is based on a comic book by Marvel about an ex-confederate soldier who's wife and son was murdered by his old commander, Quinton Turnbold for defying his orders and brands his face with his mark, hence the vagina. After being revived by Red Indians, he becomes a mythical soldier of fortune with powers to talk to the dead. Now he is called upon by the U.S government to stop Turnbold from unleashing a weapon of mass destruction on the world.

Oh and notice how I didn't mention Megan Fox in the plot at all? That's because she was only in 3 scenes and only 1 of it had purpose to the story. Her character in Jonah Hex is probably one of the most de minimis characters in movie history. It's as if the producers told the writer, "OMG we have Megan Fox for our movie!" And the writer went, "Uh.. but she's not in the script." And the producer goes, "Ohhh you'll find a way to put her in."

The film is directed by Jimmy Hayward who was one of the starting animators at Pixar and I wonder what the hell did they ever see in him. First of, the guy's direction is that of a retard. The opening animation sequence of Jonah Hex is so poorly done coming from the man who animated Toy Story. And you can tell that he is barely trying to make this movie even mildly tolerable.

What you gotta know about this movie is that it is 70 minutes long. It barely qualifies as a feature film. The first 2/3 of the movie is slightly entertaining with incoherent plot mixed with mindless but distracting explosions and action sequences, but it is the final act of the film that made my brain cells become suicidal. It's as if Hayward shot the whole movie in 45 minutes and realized he needed to pt more stuff in to make the film longer, so he grabbed the camera and asked Josh Brolin to start fighting a character I could have sworn he killed 15 minutes ago.

Josh Brolin as Jonah Hex was a decent choice of casting and he did try to make his character less campy as it was intended to. He gave Jonah Hex a dark approach which sadly didn't go with any of the outlandish settings and characters he has to work around with. It's like taking Christian Bale's Batman and dropping him in Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin.

You know what? Jonah Hex really isn't far off from Batman. We got the dark anti-hero character, a black assistant who makes cool ass weapons and a vehicle/horse with guns strapped to the side. Only difference is the director of Batman made Inception, The Dark Knight and The Prestige. The director of Jonah Hex made Horton Hears A Who. See any problems?

Let's not waste anymore time with this mess and get to the pointless rating.

RATING: 3/10