House of Cards confirmed for third season

Without having seen the second season yet – it’s out Feb. 14 – I’m happy to hear that it will get a third season. I will also be happy if they say that's the end. Nothing worse than a good show on for far too long.

I "Hated It" The Wall: Maybe I'm not smart enough for this movie, but it sucked.

There is only one reason to sit and watch a bad movie, and that is the hope/belief that it will get better, and that’s what made me watch the entire movie of The Wall, an excruciatingly dull movie with an interesting premise, but horrible story.

            I don’t need non-stop action, or a roller-coaster-ride of thrills, none of that is necessary if you have an interesting story. A woman trapped behind an invisible wall, is a great premise, a woman trapped behind an invisible wall who proceeds to farm and hunt and constantly drone on in a monotone voice about the mundane and solitary life she now leads behind said invisible wall, is a horrible story. Something interesting must happen! And again, I don’t mean explosions or shoot outs, just . . . something, be it some sort of internal struggle that changes the character, or a struggle that does not change the character, or an outward struggle that challenges the character and then changes or does not change.

           

            You know . . . something!

           

            You wake up one day and bump into an invisible wall, you walk towards the nearest neighbor and the invisible wall stops you just short of their house. The neighbors are outside, you can see them, and they are frozen in time! Huh. Well, let’s not talk about any of that ever again! It’s not until over an hour into the movie that she even mentions not caring where the wall stretches – but not once have we seen, nor has it been mentioned that she’s ever even concerned about it or looked into it. It’s a mystery, a very odd very disturbing mystery that she does not seem bothered boy or cannot be bothered by because she has to talk about her feelings of isolation and her companions and on and on and on . . .

            The only thing that I came away from this movie with was that the lady was one of the most self absorbed characters I’ve ever had the displeasure of watching for almost 2 hours.

            I’m not sure at what point in the movie she said the line: “I was the owner and the prisoner of the cow” about a cow that she stumbled upon, but oh my God did that just cinch the movie up for me. I wanted to scream at her, “Fucking try to get out you hate it so much!” which brings up the point that she tried once – really tried – to break out with the car, that didn’t work so she gave up and went back to her usual way of life. She continued to bitch and moan and all the while I wanted to kill her.

            Or turn the movie off. But something might happen, so I stuck with it.

            I really almost turned it off when she killed the deer. She shot it and it’s almost a full minute of watching it die. Now I don’t know if they just darted the deer and it was going to sleep, or if they truly killed it; I’m gonna say it did get killed because of the way it’s legs were moving and then finally sticking up towards the sky when it finally came to a stop. I didn’t need to see that shit. It was like the movie Antichrist but that whole movie was crazy and intense and supposed to be scary, this was pointless, and then we get to hear her complain about having to kill the deer! Jesus lady, you’re hungry, find some vegetables or fruit or something else if killing for your food is so horrible. You got a hankering for some meat, then you’re gonna have to kill. Get over it. Of course if we had some idea of how big of a space she was trapped in we’d have a much better idea of whether or not she’d be able to find other food than meat, but whatever, you know?

            The jumping from the future to the past was jarring as well. She’d be talking about her dog and then she’d be talking about how he died, and then back to the dog being alive again. It wasn’t necessarily hard to follow, it just that there was no point to making us go from her just finding the wall, and then years later she’s still there.

            Great, there goes that bit of mystery.

            I could keep going on about how much I hated this movie but I feel that were I to do that I’d hate my review of it almost as much, so I will end it here.

I "Loved It" The Croods: But only because my kids made me

The Croods. You saw the trailer, think the movie looks okay? It will be, think it looks dumb? It will be. It’s a kid’s show, so it’s difficult to be impressed because it’s not really gonna blow you away with anything, but then again it never says it will or even really tries. It just is what it is, and those kind of movies are good to have. As much as I love The Iron Giant, sometimes you gotta give emotional kid’s movies a break, am I right? I mean, you can only watch The Iron Giant commit suicide so many times before you need to watch something like The Croods.

            The Croods is a good movie. I can’t really find anything about it that would make it a bad kid’s movie.

            The effects of the movie was the first thing that stuck out. It looks really good, I was especially impressed with the water and how it looked. The jokes in the movie – I found – were pretty good, and I definitely was laughing more than my kids were, which I kind of took to mean a bad thing. It’s a kid’s movie and they’re not even really laughing at it. I thought the little girl who was like some sort of wild dog was hilarious, and the slapstick comedy going on between the family at times was pretty funny too, but again my kids never laughed or even really reacted to any of it.

            The only thing they reacted to was the sloth thing that I think his name was Belt? My kids freaking loved that guy and laughed hysterically whenever he was saying something it showed him reacting to something. I had to agree, he was pretty funny.

The monsters of the movie were all so original that they were pretty interesting. I’m not sure why they stuck with cave people and the continents breaking apart, and then go on to show all these monsters that are so completely out of nowhere. There are no dinosaurs or anything else that even remotely has anything to do with cavemen, but I’m not gonna complain too much because the monsters they do show were pretty cool and not what you’d expect, so that was a pretty cool little surprise.

            Of course with all movies, it helps if there’s something you can relate to. Having a daughter of my own who is still very young, I found myself several times through out the movie thinking of her and having to let her go as she gets older. I didn’t like even the idea of doing such a thing so I could easily relate to the father in the movie and how threatened he was by the new younger guy who was starting to become more important in his daughter’s eyes. The theme of the movie really struck a chord with me but I’m a sucker for a sad scene in any movie. Still, I was not expecting to be close to tears when the father, after having thrown his whole family to safety has to stay behind, and at the end draws pictures of his family on the cave wall and imagines them all as he remembered them. It was really sad and well done enough that it was emotional.

            A good movie, maybe a bit better than I expected – but not much.

I "Liked It" Man of Tai Chi: an evil Truman Show

Man of Tai Chi is not my kind of movie, really.

            I mean, I like any kind of movie as long as it's good. I've seen Wilson Yip's two Ip Man movies and liked them both. I've seen both District 13 movies and really liked them both. So I can enjoy action movies like that, they don't need explosions or gun fights, they can have just good ol' hand to hand fighting; as long as the story is interesting and the movie is entertaining, I'll enjoy it.

            Keanu Reeves gets a lot of crap, that's for sure, and whether he deserves it or not is pointless because he does little to argue it. I am still a fan of his, I generally like his movies (I even watched the Cowboy Bebop Movie when I heard he might be in the live action version). I'm not sure at what point Keanu turned all into this martial arts fan. I mean, of course there was The Matrix (they only made one movie of The Matrix, if you didn't know), but I never would have imagined that the first movie he would direct would be a martial arts film, though it seems to fit him pretty well.

            I don't know anything about making a movie, so I'll just say that whoever was in charge of how this movie was filmed and how scenes were set up (whether that be the director or cinematographer) they did a pretty good job. The first thing I noticed were the colors and how kind of slick and almost Matrix-y the movie looked and felt.

            I enjoyed Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon as much as the next guy, and I also dislike how much that whole flying through the air while fighting thing as been over used, and there's plenty of that in this. It just does not look real when people roll in the air and kick someone in the top of the head and they go flying backwards. I mean, I get that it's a movie and all, but it just doesn't even look comfortable for the actor to make it look real. It never seems like the actor doing the performance even believes it, they're just busy hoping they don't fall or hitting their mark. I get that the acrobatics look good and all but I really think it's time we toned it down.

            The movie's story is not original, and the fighting is not original, so the only thing that make it interesting is that it is Keanu Reeves' first time directing, and since that loses its importance very soon, it becomes about the acting. The thing that kept me watching was Keanu. He's not the main character, though he is the main bad guy, still, he's not in the movie a whole lot. The main character is pretty good, and though the first few fighting scenes weren't that well done (not very realistic) the fighting got better as the movie went on.

            I was into the movie enough to really appreciate and kind of be upset when the main guy starts fighting the older guy who taught him everything he knows. I think the fight would have had a lot more emotion had it gone harder and rougher, than it did, but still it was good the way it was. The whole scene, from the fighting (and this fight was done in a slow careful way, completely opposite to every other fight in the movie, and yet this fight was by far the best out of the entire movie) to the music and the way the scenes were set up and shot was great, and it’s a scene that you can’t just show someone without showing them everything building up to that moment, the frustration that the main guy is feeling is something that we all can relate to. I think that’s the main thing that keeps this movie interesting is that though I’ve never been in an illegal fighting circuit, nor ever had to really fight for money to save my . . . training temple? I know what it’s like to feel frustrated while trying to achieve a goal and always something steps in the way. I know what it’s like to want to just let it all out – usually on the wrong person – and not care who gets in the way.

            The lowest point of the movie was the fight at the club, on a dance floor, the music was bad and the fighting was bad, and when the main character loses he goes into tantrum mode (trust me, I’ve seen it many times around my house with the kids, so trust me, he was throwing a tantrum). It was enough to not like the movie, though the fight with his teacher saved it from that not being liked to being liked.

            The parts that made me enjoy the movie the most were the scenes when Keanu was really having fun, from his whispering one-liners with a growl, or his yell/roar that he does at one point, is all obvious that he’s having fun with what he’s doing. Another thing that I liked was at one point the main character gets mad and storms out of a room and when he does he walks towards the camera and at that point he angrily pushes the camera out of the way, completely breaking the fourth wall, or whatever they call it. It was a pretty crazy moment that made me like the movie and even Keanu just that bit much more because it’s there.

The passing of Philip Seymour Hoffman: If only life were like the movies; don't like the ending, we'll schedule a reshoot

 Screw the Super Bowl, watch
one of this guy's movies today

The guy had worked with some of the finest, the Coen brothers as well as Paul Thomas Anderson whom he worked with several times. Sadly it is being reported that Philip Seymour Hoffman has passed away from an apparent drug overdose.

            Man that guy did some great movies, and wide variety of them. He was by far the best villain to be in any of the Mission: Impossible movies, and the reason that the third one was good for any reason. He was also okay with being in the back just as often as he was in the front. Almost Famous, Magnolia, Along Came Polly, and Happiness just to name a few examples of sort of movies he’d be in as well as the sort of movie-time his characters would have.

            He only has a few movies streaming, and of them his best is Punch-Drunk Love, though still his small part in Hard Eight is entertaining and a standout from the whole movie.

            It would be nice were it not true, his passing. To think that a talented man, apparently a nice enough guy, and popular in the circles that would keep him working and thus keep money coming in, was still not happy? I don’t know much about drug addiction. Could he be happy with his life and still addicted to drugs? Doesn’t the addiction mean that he’s not happy, wanting to “hide the pain” if you will, of something with the drugs? It seemed like he had a good life, so why the need for drugs? Did he get hooked earlier in life when things weren’t good and then things got better but no matter who good he still had that addiction, and in the end, apparently, the addiction won.

Other Streaming Importance

The Borgias" Seasons 1-3



Harold and Maude

Now Streaming: Bates Motel Season One

The second season will be 10 episodes and premiere March 3, 2014.