Inverted Sunflower

Stakeland (C-)

This movie wasn't great and I'll probably never watch it again, but on a boring day with nothing else to watch it did help pass the time, so I'll throw it a C-.  The acting was so-so and the make-up on the undead/vampires was really bad, but the peeps who made this flick did a decent job with what was obviously a lack of talent and a very low budget (maybe no budget? Not sure).  It kept my attention about 70% of the time, most often when there was somebody getting mauled. 

 

Here's a quick low-down of the story: 2 survivors in a post-apocalyptic wasteland (a grumpy old dude and a teenage boy) ride around in a shitty convertible and hunt vampires and try to protect other human survivors.  One of them is an old nun played by Kelly McGillis...callsign Charlie in Top Gun, great to see you again!  Kinda, I mean what happened?   Maverick is in his 50's now and kept it together, but you look like Judi Dench now, eck.   Hopefully it was just the makeup?

 

Ok enough about the story and actors.  I mean there really wasn't anything that memorable in this movie.  So why a C- and not a lower grade?  BECAUSE IT WAS MADE IN MY HOMETOWN!  Holler!!  Pottstown PA, way to represent!  I loved seeing places I knew on film, it's like I wanted to high-five the screen.  Aparently the director went to a highschool in the area and wanted to pay homage to where he grew up (or maybe because it was cheaper?).  I live about 3 miles away from the vacated pizza place in the pic below (actually called Pizza World, they photoshopped the name on the sign for the movie I guess).  Life After People, you go P-town! 

 

 

 

Get the Gringo (Payback 2) A-



Ok that wasn't serious, it's not actually Payback 2.  But it could be.  Which is totally fine with me because I loved Payback and thought Mel was fantastic in both of these pieces.  Maybe the same director did both movies?  Not sure, I'll have to IMBD that.  Basically in both movies Mel plays a con man who's smart as hell and can unleash whoop-ass like a madman, but he's got rotten luck and ends up in shit situations.  He's out for revenge and makes sure he gets what's due to him ($ for the most part).   Gringo was gritty, violent, filled with f-bombs and hilarious all at the same time.   So it gets an A- from this dude. 

 

Why the minus?  Because I can't tell if Mel is acting, that's why.  Below are two pics of Mel, one is real life and one is in Get the Gringo.  See what I'm sayin?  It's like he shows up for work and the director is like, "Ok, in this scene I want you to walk over here and be yourself.  Pretend you're Mel Gibson walking.  And then I want you to stand over here and pretend you don't give a fuck.  And then go into a rage, as if you were Mel Gibson.  Action!"  So despite that I love watching Mel Gibson being Mel Gibson, I can't give him mad props for awesome acting.  It's like giving props to James Gandolfini for his "work" as Tony Soprano.   I believe that some people are amazing actors and can morph into roles to the point where I don't even recognize them (e.g. Daniel Day Lewis, Gary Oldman, Meryl Streep, etc), and some people just show up for work.  Mel's unfortunately the latter, but I still dig his stuff after all these years.  There's other "show up actors" that I get bored of way faster, e.g. I hope Michael Cera's days in the spotlight are done, I don't need to see Juno part 12.  And also Taylor Kisch, please make him go away.

 

Getting back to Gringo, Mel gets busted for a bank robbery and lands in a bizarro Mexican "prison", where basically its just a slum with walls.  But inside you can do whatever you want, like have a family, get wasted, party, anything as long as you don't piss off the warden.  The warden is a crook and a whacky plot unfolds involving Mel's new best buddy (an 11 year old), but Mel comes to the rescue and kills everyone and saves the day.  There's some really good action scenes and shootouts, and some surprising cameos (Peter Stormare and also that guy who was the warden in Shawshank Redemption, I forget his name). 

 

Bottomline is that I enjoyed these 2 hours, and could watch this movie again and it'd be worth buying on bluray.

 

 

 

God Bless America (B+)

First off, I give props to Bobcat Goldthwait for having the courage to make a movie that was so over the top and non-PC that I was literally amazed it wasn't banned.  It reminded me of how the world must have felt similar shock when Pink Flamingos first came out, where instead of a story about perverted white trash it was about a dude that wants to kill anyone and everything to do with pop culture (and does).  As I watched I just couldn't believe that this movie didn't stir up more criticism from the general populace for making light of spree killers and demented whacko's.   Strangely I sympathized with the main character's issues with society and several scenes definitely gave me anxiety, Bobcat did a good job of over-emphasizing what pushed Frank (main character)'s buttons and ultimately made him lose it.  

The opening scene...wow (see pic below).  Wasn't ready for that.  Seriously considered not watching the rest of the movie if that's what it was going to be like.  But as I kept watching I started understanding the tone of the movie and the things that made him want to go nuts on a daily basis, so I became interested to see how this would end.  It ended up bloody, with a crazy body count.  Random killings, spree killings, imagined killings, etc.  But this movie had one thing going for it that other violent movies didn't have (e.g. Rampage), it had a good script.  The dialogue between Frank and his little sidekick was entertaining, and the killings seemed less senseless if you understood why they were going insane. 

A B+ instead of an A because it wasn't very realistic.  Sure there's lots of whacko's out there in the news everyday that flip out, but not a dude and a 15yr old girl that just keep going, crime after crime and not getting caught.  It's like there were no police on their tail, no witnesses or evidence that would get them caught?  Not likely.  But in the end it was still a good flick, very original and didn't hold back.  I'll probably be on the FBI watch list now for watching and commenting on this movie, oh well.  I still recommend watching it.  I could watch it again whereas I don't think I can ever watch Pink Flamingos again.

Cicada Killa

Act of Valor (B-)

Ok, if you can accept that the acting is pretty bad and just enjoy the crazy action scenes, you too might also give this a decent rating.  The dialogue has a strange Navy commercial feel to it, not very "real life".  I like to think that most soldiers curse alot, but the dialogue in this was delivered overly perfect and clean.  It was actually the complete opposite of the dialogue in Full Metal Jacket, which my brother (a Marine) said was pretty accurate.  Maybe Navy guys are just more proper and eloquent? 

Anyway, the action was nuts.  From what I read online they used alot of live ammo to blow things up and shred stuff with insane machine guns.  That's something my brother did mention about fake Hollywood action movies; the artillery looks/sounds nothing like the real stuff, for example he said real hand grenades have such powerful percussion that it practically takes your breath away.  Most Hollywood grenades look like a poofy of fire and some dirt flying out of a small hole.  Well, Act of Valor was the opposite, the sound and destruction just felt authentically awesome.   Especially the river boat scene with the miniguns (see below pic of the bullet-riddled SUV), that scene was unreal.  I suppose having the entire Navy arsenal at your disposal makes it easy to put awesomeness into a flick.  If only it had R.Lee Ermy in it, then this would have ruled. 

Part of me watched this and missed the cheesiness of the Charles Sheen & Michael Biehn epic "Navy Seals".  Remember the scene in where they go golfing in 80's neon shorts?  That ruled.
 

Lockout (C-)

If I could sum this movie up, it's The Rock + Con Air + Escape From New York but set in space.  15 years ago this would have been an ideal movie for me because I was into action flicks like this, I probably would have given it a higher rating too.  A sign of the times that I'm getting old I suppose, that sucks.

Guy Pearce has typically been a good actor in my eyes (L.A. Confidential, Ravenous, Memento, etc).  Good stuff.  He always surprises me with his perfect American accent too because he's got a pretty heavy Australian accent in real life.  Good work, Guy.  In this movie though it was a little over the top, like Bruce Willis in Die Hard.  He was trying too hard to have funny one-liners in the face of danger.  Evidently this piece was written by Luc Besson, the guy who did Professional and Fifth Element, so perhaps Luc's perception of American funny dialogue is limited by his Frenchiness and overexposure to Stallone and Arnold movies.  Bruce Willis had more believable quips in Die Hard is all I'm saying, and Guy Pearce's lines came off lame.

The bad guy (see below) was my only favorite part of the movie.  Not big physically (actually very scrawny), but completely nutso.  A truely homicidal psychopath, everytime he was left alone with someone he basically had to kill them.  His bodily behavior was loopy and twitchy too, kind of Heath Ledger Joker-ish.  The only thing that sucked was that his accent (Irish? Scotish?) was so thick I couldn't understand what the hell he was saying.  Like Brad Pitt in Snatch.  Funny at times, but mostly annoying.

Ok the end was completely goofy.  Not going to spoil it, but it's absurd.  And I'm not sure I remember the bad guy dying.  I guess it was inferred by something else that happens, but sometimes I like to see it happen, just for closure or some sort of demented pleasure that I can't explain. 

Overall, I don't need to see this movie again.  Maybe if it's on the Sci-Fi channel and there's nothing else on I might put it on, but otherwise it was a dud. 

Treefrog pee

Took this photo of a Pennsylvania tree frog seconds before it projectile peed on me and my daughter.  Shot like 4 feet!   Wahoot!   Is frog pee lethal?

Savages (D+)

Despite a true desire to see this movie because of a cool cast, sweet trailer with pump you up music by Eminem & Nate Dogg (RIP), and decent reviews (B+ per EW), in my opinion this movie quickly fell to pieces into a heap of steaming poo.  Maybe I shouldn't say "quickly", more like half-way through the movie.  It started off decent and had my interest, although I could have done without the scenes of naked men humping a hot actress...who shows nothing?  :(  And then the acting plunges into something like a direct-to-dvd piece of crap, not something you'd expect with Oliver Stone's name attached to it.  I cringed at each scene with Salma Hayek, her lines were so bad and delivered even worse.  Travolta was a butthead and even looked cross-eyed at times, and I'm not sure what Emile Hircsh's role was other than to talk about computer stuff with a far-out surfer dude accent.  The ending(s)...ugghhh.  Not even going to go there.  Questions:

1) how did Taylor Kisch's buddies from Iraq all still have all their crazy weapons, like sniper rifles and automatic machine guns, explosives for IED's and RPG's?  Does the Army let you bring that stuff home after a tour? 
2) does it hurt to get shot nowadays?  Didn't seem to phase Taylor because he got nailed like 8 times and kept going like the Terminator.  Just not realistic.
3) there were so many mess-ups with scenes, e.g. when Travolta calls Salma Hayek's character Lorena instead of Elena.  Doesn't anyone edit this stuff?  Did Oliver Stone watch the movie before it was released, or maybe he delegated that task to someone else who was retarded/drunk?  Also, there were like 16 scenes that should have been deleted.  Boring or pointless scenes, like when Blake is shopping.  So again, bad editing. Or maybe is was just a lack of a good story, so they filled in the 2 hours with garbage?
4) Benicio was really odd.  Like when Blake Lively spat a big hocker in his face, and then he wiped it and licked his fingers, and then wiped his face with her hair.  That's weird.  I like to imagine that a real Mexican cartel guy would just kill her instantaneously.  Boom, bullet to the head...or maybe chainsaw off the head I don't know.  Hollywood cartels are pretty bizarre for sure.

I seriously wanted to like this movie, but ultimately the end credits wouldn't roll up soon enough. Dragged on and on, lame acting, and poor movie-making in general. Not even cool in a make-fun-of-it kind of way, I just wanted it to be over.  Ok later.

Tree spooge