You know you can’t judge a book by its cover; a movie on the other hand prejudge away. In fact, that’s what I’m doing judging movies that come out in April by their trailers, plots, or history.
Overall it doesn’t seem like a good movie month. There’s not really any movies I’m anticipating to see,but there’s some I don’t want see.
Before, in my blog I would do individual reviews on the movies that I have seen. I realized that was very time consuming and with most of the movies I don’t have much to comment on. Instead I’m going to do “Movies of the Month” where at the end of the month I do short reviews of each movie I saw during the month. I’m only reviewing movies that I see in theaters.
3 out of 5 stars
3 1/2 out of 5 stars
2 1/2 out of 5
1 1/2 out of 5
In retrospect I didn’t really see anything great this month. I hope next month is better.
Best List Possible Nominees: The best movie I saw this month (Paul Blarts Mall Cop) was good but it won’t make my best movie list because I’ll definitely see 13 better films then Paul Blarts Mall Cop.
Worst List Possible Nominees: Definitely Underworld rise of the Lycans and maybe the International.
The Oscars are over and I just have to say that I’m glad that Slumdog Millionaire, my favorite movie of 2008 won 8 awards including best picture and best original song -- Jai Ho baby. But let’s not talk about the 2009 Oscars because that’s in the past. Instead let’s talk about the future; specifically the future of films within next month.
March 2009 looks like a decent movie month. Seems like there’s a selection of films to see. Let’s wait to see if they’re going to be good or not.
13. Oil Finger (Quantum of Solace): One of the most famous scenes of all the Bond films was in Gold Finger when James Bond discovers a bond girl dead across the bed covered in gold. Quantum of Solace the newest bond film James Bond discovers a bond girl dead across the bed covered in oil. Now this scene is suppose to be a joke saying that oil is the new gold. I don’t mean to bash the writers but I don’t think the discovery of a dead person is an appropriate time to make jokes. Also the oil is the new gold joke is now dated since gas prices have lowered. They tried to pay homage but instead embarrassed themselves.
12. Hulk throw far (Incredible Hulk): The Incredible hulk wasn’t a bad film but it had its moments. One of those moments came at the beginning where the army sent a team of specialist after the Hulk. The Hulk picks up a giant metal crate and then throws it at on of the specialist. Now usually when somebody throws something at someone the scene is only a few seconds long but not in the Incredible Hulk. In this film the specialist runs while the crate is thrown in the air towards him and follows him for two minutes.
11. Magnetic Pea (Be Kind Rewind): In Be Kind Rewind a character played by Jack Black sneaks into a power plant and gets zapped. He then gets magnetized and all metal objects go towards him. A day later he pees in the street and the pee is flowing through the street magnetized and is green. That’s pretty dumb.
10. Excellent Phone Reception (Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D): In Journey to the center of the earth 3D an explorer and his nephew travel to the center of the earth. While in the center guess what happens. The nephew’s mom calls him on a cell phone and he picks up the phone and answer. What phone service do they use? What phone service is so good that their phones can get signals in the center of the earth?
9. Catty sack (Don’t mess with the Zohan): Don’t Mess with the Zohan is a very silly film and some of the silly jokes are funny. But there’s one scene where Zohan and one of his friends is playing hacky sack with a cat. This scene has no relevance to the plot and isn’t funny. It’s just weird.
8. Magic Trick (The Dark Knight): The Dark Knight is a great film with good editing, good acting, and good story. Most people say it’s the best film of 2008 which I disagree. But I do have to say that the Dark Knight had one of the most original and creative scenes of the year. It’s when the Joker is talking to the mobsters and one of the mobsters tells his goon to rip the Joker’s head off. The Joker sticks a pencil on the table and says “how about a magic trick, I will make this pencil disappear”. The goon runs at the Joker and the Joker grabs his head and slams in on the pencil. The Pencil goes into his eye. That’s not the strange part; the strange part is that it was the dull end of the pencil. I have a talent for predicting what happens in movies which made most of the Joker’s plans not surprising but the pencil scene just completely surprised me.
7. Soup heals famine (Tales of Despereaux): In tales of Despereaux there’s a kingdom that use to obsess over soup. Then the queen died because a rat fell in her soup. The king then banned soup from the entire kingdom. The kingdom then falls into a huge depression where it never rained. At the end of the movie the head chief finally says screw the law I’m making soup. When this happens all the people in the kingdom smell the soup and everyone’s happy. It doesn’t stop there the smell of the soup goes into the sky and it starts raining. I didn’t know soup was the answer to drought and famine. That’s our answer to global warming; we need to make more soup.The movie was still good but the soup thing was pretty stupid. Also the book was better mostly because it wasn’t as much about soup. (Note: how many times soup was used in this paragraph: 12)
6. I’m the big one (Transporter 3): Transporter 3 is a very ridiculous movie. The most ridiculous part comes after the fight scene where our hero Frank Martin beats up 10 guys and then a really big guy comes in and here’s what they said.
5. Retards (Tropic Thunder): Not all weird and stupid film moments have to happen in the film. Sometimes it what people say outside of the film that makes no sense. Like the controversy surrounding the movie Tropic Thunder. Now if you think that Tropic Thunder caused controversy you’re probably thinking “oh people are complaining that Robert Downy Jr. is playing an African American”. But no people are complaining saying that the film is offensive to the retarded (they should know). In the film Ben Stiller does play an actor who played a retarded person named Simple Jack but they didn’t like go over the top with it and it’s very subtle. That makes me think that there’s a controversy committee that find things to complain about. Here’s how their meeting went:
4. Yeti bowl (Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor): This weird moment comes when our heroes are followed by soldiers wanting to kill them. Their Asian friend then yells some Chinese and then Yetis come down and help them. They even play football with the soldiers. Now the Yetis came out of nowhere and the whole fight is pretty stupid. Ironically the same day I saw this I saw Harry and the Hendersons. This is a movie where Yetis (or Bigfoot) is sweet and wouldn’t hurt a fly.
3. Mutt king of the Apes (Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull): I’ve talked about this movie a lot telling you about the Alien filled ending that would’ve ruined the film but the film sucked without it. This film is filled with moments that are qualified for this list but I would have to say that the weirdest moment is during the car chase scene in the jungle where Mutt is caught on a vine and monkeys then come down. When this happened I thought “Oh we’re going to learn that Mutt’s scared of monkeys seeing that his father’s afraid of snakes and his grandfather’s afraid of rats”. But no instead Mutt swings through the air like Tarzan with the monkeys following him.
2. That stupid twist (Hancock): Hancock is the type of movie where the plot changes midway through the film and it’s like you’re watching two movies. Usually these types of films are good but Hancock was an exception. The first half was bad but not horrible but then the twist happened. The twist is that Superheroes are built in pairs and if the pairs are near each other they start losing their powers. That twist is very stupid and complicated and ended up starting the downfall of this film.
1. Thank the lord he can drive (Twilight): The weirdest moment of the entire year of films in 08(at least in the films I’ve seen) is a very subtle but it defies the laws of science. It happens when Edward’s leaving Bella’s house and he’s driving down the road while Billy (who hates Edward) is driving past him giving him the evil eye. The first thing wrong with this scene is the expression on Billy’s face, it’s hilarious. The second thing wrong with this scene is the fact the Billy is in the driver seat. What’s wrong with this? Billy is crippled. Crippled means you are paralyzed from the waist down which means you can’t push the pedals making this scene impossible.
7. Missed a perfect joke opportunity (Horton Hears a Who): based on the popular Dr. Seuss book; Horton Hears a Who is about an elephant named Horton (Voiced by Jim Carry) who hears a tiny world that’s living on a spec on a clover. On the world there’s Whoville (yep the same one that got Christmas stolen from them by the Grinch) led by their Mayor (voiced by Steve Carrel) who has an emo son named Jojo. The climax comes at the end where a kangaroo is trying to destroy the clover because it’s absurd that there’s a tiny world, so the people in Whoville have to break the sound barrier so they know that there really is a world there. All the whos are yelling but then the Mayor gets his son Jojo to go and yell. I know what’s going to happen he’s going to have a really high pitched voice and it’s going to be hilarious. So Jojo yells and he doesn’t have a high pitched voice in fact he’s voiced by Jesse freaken McCartney. His voice still breaks the sound barrier but you have to think “What the hell you just missed a perfect joke opportunity”. Not only would Jojo having a high pitched voice not only would’ve been hilarious but it would’ve made sense that his voice would’ve broke the sound barrier.
6. What just happened? (Appaloosa): I saw this movie recently and I have to say that this is a movie that would’ve definitely made my worst movie list if I saw it before I made it. Appaloosa is about two lawmen who clean up the town of Appaloosa, New Mexico. They get trouble by a rancher played by Jeremy Irons. At the end Jeremy Irons gets pardoned by the President of the United States so one of the lawmen just go into a bar asked him to a shootout in the street. The lawman wins and he rides off into the sunset. Two things crossed my mind one was “What just happened?” two was “oh how clichéd”.
5. Sing an explosive song (Don’t Mess with the Zohan): Don’t Mess with the Zohan is about an Israeli counter terrorist who fakes his own death so he could do hair in New York. His past ends up catching up with him when an Arabian terrorist comes and finds him. But soon the Israeli and Arabs living in New York have to work together against a New York business man trying to kick them out. I liked the whole enemies working together against one big enemy but it’s soon ruined when one of the guys the New York business man hired gets some explosive and a cage of puppies and threatens to blow up the puppies. So Zohan and his rival named the Phantom sing some Middle Eastern Hymn which ends up blowing up the block and saving the puppies. Now this movie was intentionally stupid but this part was just plain retarded.
4. Mummies were soon discovered in Peru (Mummy 3): The Mummy 3’s climax was very clichéd and isn’t really anything special but what I want to talk about is at the very end when the comic relief character named Jonathan is getting in a taxi. Jonathon says that he’s tired of mummies so he’s going to where there are no mummies, he’s going to Peru. This joke was funny but then some words appear on the screen saying “soon after Mummies were discovered in Peru”. That is completely stupid. It’s like when someone tells a joke and then explains why it was funny; it doesn’t make it funnier it just ruins the joke.
3. We wanted to see you get killed a second ago but now we like you (Drillbit Taylor): If you read my blog so far then you would know that I absolutely hated Drillbit Taylor and along my line of hatred is the ending of Drillbit Taylor. The ending has the nerds that were being picked on going to go fight the bullies. Everybody in their school is there to watch them get beaten up. So as we might suspect the nerds beat the bullies with the help of Drillbit Taylor and after that happened the nerds now enjoy their new popularity. Now this ending has poor morals because it teaches you that you have to do something great for people to like you. The only thing good about this ending is the fact that it means that the film is over.
2. You have to take the fall Batman (The Dark Knight): The Dark Knight is a well written movie but the ending to it is one of the worst of the year. What happens is that Harvey Dent who is now Two-Face wants to kill Gordon and his family, but Batman comes just in time and tackles Harvey Dent making him fall to his death. Gordon says that they can’t tell the people that Harvey Dent is a murderer because it will make people lose hope so Harvey’s crimes are pinned on Batman. So let me get this strait, instead of having the people learn that a harmless late attorney was a murderer you’ll instead have them learn that a guy who lurks in the shadow, beats people to a pulp, has a plethora of fighting tools, and is very much alive is evil. Yeah no wonder you’re the commissioner.
1. Aliens ruin everything (Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull): You’ve probably already heard about this ending so let me explain in short. The crystal skull belongs to aliens so they go into the temple return the crystal skull and the aliens come back to life, kill the Russians, and go with their spaceship into space. Dumbest ending of the year. 
Push (Releases 2-06-09): What I think of Push is that it’s going major crap. It looks like a bad version of Heroes. It also has Camilla Bell in it. Now I haven’t seen any of Camilla Bell’s films but that’s because all of them got bad reviews. Either she’s cursed or she makes bad choices on what movies she’s in. Dakota Fanning’s is in the film also. You know one thing I’ve notice is that actors in Hollywood don’t age as fast as regular people. I mean that Dakota Fanning in her teens and she could still play a little girl. Same thing with Freddy Highmore; he’s 15 but he looks 10. Is there a serum available to actors that prevent them from going through puberty? On the movie I have to say that I won’t see it.
Coraline (Releases 2-06-09): I really don’t think this film would be good. It looks like a mediocre kid’s film but it might be good. I don’t know I probably won’t see it unless it got great reviews.
He’s not that into you (Releases 2-06-09): I don’t have much opinion on this film. It looks like a typical rom-com. It didn’t look funny but it probably won’t be horrible. I most likely won’t see it. 
Fanboys (Releases 2-06-09): This made my 7 most anticipated films of 08 list but back when I made the list all I knew about it is the plot. After seeing the trailer I have to say that it looks like Drillbit Taylor but with a star wars based plot. Unless it got great reviews I might pass up on this comedy.
Friday the 13th (Releases 2-13-09): A remake of a horror film. Is there any reason to see it? No.
Jonas Brother 3D concert (Releases 2-27-09): I hate the Jonas Brother’s music so I definitely won’t see this movie, no matter what.
7. Edward actually fights James (Twilight): Sure this ending’s a bit generic and there’s even an unintentionally funny moment but this ending disserves an honorable mention because the ending in the movie is a lot better than the ending in the book. Let me explain; in the movie Edward comes in and defeats James and then saves Bella, but in the book Edward just comes in and has his brothers kill James. The ending in the book really made me angry because it was so anticlimactic so I really appreciate that they changed that for the movie.
6. He dies in the ring (The Wrestler): The Wrestler is about a down on his luck wrestler named Randy the Ram who has a very depressing life. His daughter hates him, the woman he likes won’t date him, and he even has a heart condition that prevents him from wrestling. He stops wrestling for a little bit to try to shape up his life but that ends up failing. So he decides to wrestle in the 20th anniversary of his most famous match. His heart starts going out during the match so his opponent lets him body slam him for the win. Randy crawls up on the corner post and stands tall. He’s crying and the original song by Bruce Springsteen starts playing. He jumps off the post and the screen goes black while he’s in midair and the credits start playing. We know that means his heart goes out on him. While a depressing ending it’s a very fitting ending to this film.
5. It is written (Slumdog Millionaire): Slumdog Millionaire is about a slumdog named Jamal going on Who Wants to be a Millionaire because he knows that his true love will be watching. He makes it far in the show but is arrested because he’s accused of cheating. They end up letting him back on the show with one question left. The question ends up being about the three musketeers which was referenced throughout the movie. He doesn’t know the answer so he uses his last lifeline which is phone a friend so he calls his brother but his true love picks up. It ends up she doesn’t know the answer either so Jamal just guesses. He ends up guessing right so he was right it was written. While many predicted that he would end up winning the money it was a great ending due to the build up to the moment making it a very satisfying ending.
4. I am Ironman (Ironman): Ironman is about a millionaire named Tony Stark who builds himself an iron suit. The movie comes to a close where Tony Stark’s business partner Obadiah Stane builds his own iron suit and tries to kill him. Tony Stark ends up winning which is pretty predictable but that’s not the ending I’m talking about. The ending I’m talking about is at the very end where Tony Stark is at a press conference. An organization called shield gives Tony Stark an alibi which he is suppose to tell the press. Tony Stark is about to tell the press the alibi but he instead puts the cards down and say “the truth is… I am Ironman”. This ending is great because it shows how consistent they went with Tony Stark’s character. It would’ve been so out of character for him to go with the alibi so they made the right decision with the ending.
3. He didn’t bring a gun (Gran Torino): Usually when Clint Eastwood is in a movie you would think that he ends up killing the bad guys but in Gran Torino they decided to do things differently. In Gran Torino Clint Eastwood’s character Walt Kowalski ends up confronting an Asian gang that been tormenting his neighbors. Also Walt Kowalski also has cancer so he doesn’t have long to live. The gang comes out to confront him having their guns pointed at him. Spectators come out of their houses to see what was going on. Walt first pesters the gang by pretending that his finger was a gun and using it on them. Walt then brings out a cigarette and reaches into his coat. The gang all shoot him multiple times, the movie even show that the bullets come out of his back to show he wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest. Walt falls down and dies, the camera focuses on his hand showing that he was only getting out a lighter. The gang ends up getting arrested because they were a lot of witnesses to report their crime and it ends up Walt didn’t bring a single gun. It was his plan to get shot down.
2. Does he die? He doesn’t care (In Bruges): Now the ending of In Bruges is probably the most interesting ending of any film in this year. Let me explain; In Bruges is about a hitman named Ray who accidentally killed a little boy during his first hit. So he wants to kill himself but another hitman named Ken convinces him that his life is worth living. But their boss Harry has other ideas. Harry comes to kill Ray because of his morals. When Harry comes to kill Ray a suspenseful chase is given. Every opportunity that was foreshadowed ended up going down the toilet. Harry ends up shooting Ray but the bullets go through him and end up shooting a midget. Harry thinking he accidentally killed a little kid; shot himself, and Ray is taken into an ambulance. Ray narrates saying that a few days ago he would have welcome death but now it seems his life is at least worth something, will I live I don’t think it matters. The screen then goes black and the credits start. Does he live or die? I don’t know. That’s what makes this ending interesting. 
1. I’ve got your Tivo (Tropic Thunder): since half of my list so far has been unhappy endings I decided to give the #1 spot to the funniest ending of the year which belongs to the movie Tropic Thunder. This ending needs a lot of plot explanation to make sense so I’ll try my best to explain. A director dropped a group of actors in the middle of the jungle to shoot a film. One of the actors is a washed up action star named Tugg Speedman (played by Ben Stiller) who wants to adopt a son. Tugg ends up getting captured by some drug lords. At the pot camp Tugg ends up meeting a little kid and decides to adopt him. There’s also a subplot about Tugg’s manager trying to get Tugg a Tivo. So the groups of actors rescue Tugg and then steal a helicopter, but Tugg decides to stay behind with his new son. Tugg runs to the camp and the actors are about to take off but Tugg comes running back yelling “I was wrong” his son is on his back stabbing him. Tugg throws the toddler off the bridge and gets in the Helicopter. While taking off the Drug lords come back with a rocket launcher and fires a rocket at them, but then Tugg’s manager comes out of the jungle yelling “I’ve got your Tivo”. Tugg’s manager then throws the Tivo in front of the rocket and they’re saved. This ending is a lot funnier if you actually saw it instead of reading about it. 
