This CD Rocks!

Why did I miss out on this band the first couple of times through? How could I have been so naive to miss one of the most intriguing and entertaining bands this side of The Bloodhound Gang? That question may never be answered, but what has been shown to me is one of the greatest CDs I own, and while some may pass them off as two-bit performers in a world surrounded by the Brittney’s and the Christina’s, Reel Big Fish and their latest album Cheer Up! is a pleasure to listen to.

The CD brings you in with the first single “Where Have You Been?” that introduces you to the band in a way any well knowing record exec would. Throw a pop-like track on the radio and draw in the kiddies, and this song does just that. With a more mellow tone than the rest of the CD, “Where Have You Been?” has just the right formula to draw in fans, and draw in fans it does.

What most people don’t see is the rest of the disc is just as good, if not better, than the first single. With the overtone of dateless, loser type twentysomething prevalent on most of the album “Suckers,” which deals with people who still believe in true love, “We Are the Dateless Losers,” doesn’t really need too much explanation, and “Valerie,” which the band relives a very one-sided relationship. Funnier songs come in the form “Ban the Tube Top,” and “Rock n Roll Is Bitchin’” as well as the acapella “New York, New York.”

The more serious stuff finds its way onto the album in the afore mentioned “Where Have You Been,” that details a long lost girlfriend trying to come back to a man she left for another, “Brand New Hero,” and “Drunk Again.” Each of these songs changes up the CD to keep things fresh and new.

The best part of this CD is the lasting quality of the songs. Each has its own unique flavor that makes theme completely sing able, and completely enjoyable for the 50th time you listen to the CD. With such style and finesse as Reel Big Fish have, it is very good to know this CD won’t be collecting dust after the first few listens. If it were a cassette, I would have already gone through two by now.

Don’t do what I did, jump into Cheer Up! with with both feet and enjoy what music can be in the twenty first century.

One Hour Photo is a very Chuck Palahniuk-like experience of the real world that shows the isolation and desolate feelings people reflect upon their lives which causes them to emotionally attach to that which they don’t have. One Hour Photo caps off Robin Williams’ triumphant return to film in the role of a villain in three movies this year, Insomnia, Death to Smoochy, and One Hour Photo. This movie was everything I was hoping it would be, and with the high expectations I had for it, I was very happy it turned out the way I wanted it to.

The story is simple enough to follow, but not until the very end do you get the scope. Sy Parrish is a photo-technician at a store very similar to Wal-Mart in more than one aspect. Since Sy lives alone and has no viable family he emotionally grasps on to a mother, husband and their son, whom he has been developing pictures for nine years. The intriguing part of the story is the fact that you feel very, very bad for Sy during the movie and his character is vividly brought to life by the brilliant Robin Williams. There are several times during the movie when you almost hate the family and want something bad to happen to them.

Throughout the course of the film you are given more insight into Sy’s obsession with these pictures (almost every one the family has undoubtfully taken) and you see how he envisions himself as “Uncle Sy” in his mind, even a very extensive day-dreaming scene gives further proof to this point. When Sy stumbles on to a set of pictures from another customer that implicates the husband as cheating on his wife, his vision of the perfect family is ruined and his picture shattered, which leads him to set out to correct things.

Again, you never see Sy as a bad guy throughout the entire film, he is more of a caring overseer who just wants things to be perfect, and back to the way they were.

Robin Williams is spectacular Parrish, and while the supporting cast is made up of primarily no name characters, they do an outstanding job of filling in the background and setting up scenes for Williams to light up the big screen.

The story itself is an excellent, dark story that is very reminding, in my mind, of Fight Club, if the movie were a bit darker it could be a Fincher film. This is good cinema, and Robin Williams needs to be nominated for an Oscar for his performance in one of his movies this year, because the man is back, and hopefully, back to stay.

I feel dumb for two reasons, reason number one is I actually went to see this movie, and reason number two is I didn’t walk out. FearDotCom has to be one of the stupidest movies I have ever seen. The movie isn’t even good enough to be featured on the lovable Mystery Science Theatre 3000, it is just that horrible. While it still isn’t as horrible as the god-awful Rollerball, it comes really damn close.

The biggest hurdle you must tower over when watching FearDotCom is the fact that the movie makes absolutely no sense, and the plot had so many holes a forty guy gang-bang couldn’t fill them all up, it just makes you think so much it is stupid.

Today’s word of the day is: stupid.

The movie’s plot is this. Mike Riley has been chasing a killer known only by the name, “The Doctor” (how original). Apparently The Doctor likes to kill people and record it from multiple angles and play it on the web for all to enjoy, and us silly humans seem to get our kicks from seeing someone killed live and online, so thousands of people watch each and every one of these deaths. There is this “other” site that is “inhabited” by one of The Doctor’s first victims and she wants revenge so whenever anyone logs on she seductively asks if they want to play, flashes their eyes, and they go insane and die within 48 hours. Clever.

The real problem is if this girl wants these people to help her enact her revenge on The Doctor why in the hell would she give them 48 hours only? Most people wouldn’t get off their lazy butts to do anything until it has been like 45 hours or so, it feels like she is defeating the purpose and it is just one of the many times the plot is about as thin as Kate Moss on a diet.

Riley (Stephen Dorff) teams up with a health official, Terry Houston (Natascha McElhone), after several teenagers and adults are killed by an unknown antigen, they think it is a virus, we know it is the “crazy” internet woman. After investigating one murder and ruling out a virus she sticks around when there is really nothing for her to do. Then the story jumps all over the place and even goes so far as to talk to characters that have no relevance in the story at all, it is amazing that someone can write a script this bad, unless you’ve seen A Walk to Remember.

Acting is subpar, and dialog must have been written by a fourth grader with a mental handicap. Stephen Dorff was a bad-ass in Blade, but now he is reduced to crap status with some really bad roles he has picked as of late, like Deuces Wild and this steaming pile. Natascha McElhone does a respectable job, but nothing can save this movie, even if she is really hot.

While FearDotCom does have some cool imagery here and there, and some very disturbing stuff you can’t help but feel “The Doctor” is a freaking wacko and when the movie’s message comes across as “technology is evil, use it and you will be f’ed” this isn’t a movie I am running into the theatre to see.

Surprisingly since I wasn’t looking forward to this film, I am now looking forward to DreamWorks’ The Ring which opens this fall, lets just hope it doesn’t leave a bitter taste in your mouth, or try to jam something else into it.

The original Jeepers Creepers was a surprisingly good horror movie two years ago when it was released. The cliché of the masked killer was brought to a new level by The Creeper (Jonathan Breck), a seemingly immortal being who collected bodies and made tools and wallpaper out of them. The scare factor of the first movie wasn’t jump-out-of-your-soiled-seat but the film did introduce us to a good time. Now, two years later, in a summer where sequels have continued to under perform and leave fans displeased Jeepers Creepers 2 continues the tradition.

Think about everything you liked about the first Jeepers Creepers, delete it, and you have Jeepers Creepers 2 a film lacking any of the coolest parts of the original, instead putting a group of teenagers (how original) in a situation where they are picked off one by one (again, how original). The innovation and originality of the first film were plucked from their happy home and replaced with standard horror-fare that leaves you groaning on just how bad a script can be, and still get made.

JC2 is nothing more than a B-movie wrapped in a franchise name and force feed to a set group of moviegoers who, not just two weeks ago, saw a much more impressive Freddy vs. Jason. Truth be told MGM is smart for releasing this film so close to New Line’s Freddy vs. Jason as to cash in on the inevitable demand for new horror after the two titans of terror fight to the “death.”

The main problem with JC2 is that it can’t even stand tall enough to even think about holding a torch to the original. Aside from a short cameo by Darry (Justin Long) you wouldn’t even know this movie is connected to the franchise. Gone is the immensely cool, fear-producing truck. Gone is the home of the Creeper complete with hundreds of bodies sown together on the walls, although the house is mentioned as having gone up in flames earlier in the movie. Gone is the creepiness of the Creeper who is now just flying around picking people off the ground while avoiding spears to the head. Hell, they don’t even play the infamous song associated with every death in the original film.

It doesn’t help that the script is full of enough holes to satisfy the porn industry. No name characters disappear and reappear from time to time. During the film’s climax a girl is pushed from a truck just before it crashes and explodes. We never see her again. Before the aforementioned truck explodes we see the driver crawl out of the wreckage, but we never see him again. Plus the entire side-plot of a farmer, Jack Taggart (Ray Wise) going after the Creeper because he killed his son looks as though it was tacked on to put more action in a film that only needs to be 20 minutes long to get the point across.

Try as I might I couldn’t find anything redeeming for my $6.50. The badness of the bad guy is gone. The coolness of the truck and hide-out are gone. The characters are nothing more than canon fodder, and while some other movies at least attempt to interject some story into the mix, JC2‘s writers don’t even give them names, and when they do, they are called Minxie (Nicki Lynn Aycox).

The whole film is just a very disappointing experience with it’s only bright spot being great cinematography, especially the opening cornfield sequence. Jeepers Creepers 2 should be avoid by fans and horror patrons as it leaves a sour taste in your mouth. See Freddy vs. Jason again if you just need some horror in your life, or venture to a discount theater and glimpse 28 Days Later once again.

If you asked me back in February about which movie I would have the most fun at this year I’m sure I would have a bunch of different answers. Trailers touting The Hulk, X2, The Matrix: Reloaded, etc. all would have me enticed with the thought of comic book heroes coming to life on the big screen, or huge sequels to some of my favorite movies. I wouldn’t even have dreamed that Freddy vs. Jason could be a shinning spot in an otherwise lacking summer movie season, but here we are, days after the film’s release, and I can’t stop thinking about just how cool the film actually was.

Even if you aren’t a fan of both series, or either of them, you know who Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees are. For the unenlightened the film gives origin sequences to each character, but true fans will see the joining of two huge horror series into a bloodbath of gratuitous nudity, decapitation, disembowelment, and, my favorite, dismemberment.

Jason (Ken Kirzinger, from the Friday the 13th series, when not getting killed by underachieving teenagers, hangs around Camp Crystal Lake, the site of this drowning nearly 35 years ago. In classic Friday fashion anyone who goes skinny-dipping, does drugs, or has premarital sex is marked for death. Freddy (Robert Englund), on the other hand, is the polar-opposite of the lumbering, mindless Jason. Mr. Kruger was an intelligent child killer who was burned alive by the townsfolk after being released from custody. He seeks children in their dreams (a place you are left defenseless) and kills them there.

After the children of Freddy’s former stomping grounds are given a drug that inhibits dreaming, he is left powerless. Since almost no one remembers his name, they no longer fear him, and without fear, he has now power. So, by way of trickery, Freddy conjures up an image of Jason’s mother and tells him to begin killing and instill fear in the hearts and minds of children once again. This plan works all too well for Freddy, as Jason doesn’t stop once he gets going, leading to a confrontation of two of horrors biggest antagonists.

The film, although very poorly acted on the part of the supporting cast, really gets its spark from the wit of Freddy and the excellent kills provided by Jason. As with every Friday film, we are treated to a number of glorious un-doings, including a rather painful romp on a folding bed. The movie doesn’t skimp on the gore either, no cut away shots, although some blatant MPAA based editing can be seen. With each detached limb comes a fountain of the red stuff that makes Mortal Kombat look like a flesh wound. In fact one scene of the film reminds you a lot of the Monty Python classic.

Freddy and Jason meet twice during the film for a balls out fight to he death, once in Freddy’s decrepit basement lair and again on the shores and docks of Camp Crystal Lake. The film takes into account that you know who these characters are, and who doesn’t, but then asks you to forget every move in each series, more so Friday the 13th than Nightmare on Elm Street. Those wondering how Jason X fits into the picture can figure that it is either a splinter storyline, or happens after the events of this film.

Director Ronny Yu is not stranger to the pairings of weird killers, he directed Bride of Chucky, and shows us that he isn’t afraid to deliver above average special effects, buckets of blood, and a touch of humor to keep you occupied through the movies very few slow parts.

With a cast mainly comprised of no-namers who are just there to become canon fodder in the crossfire you look forward to the next kill and the next confrontation of these two killing machines. Freddy vs. Jason gave me a lot more than I expected to get after reading some preliminary so-so press about the film, but after seeing it for myself I can honestly say I haven’t had a better time at the movies all summer and I certainly can’t wait for the DVD.

XXX (Triple X, man the search engines are going to love this page) does just what is promises, but fails to live up to what some of the critics made it out to be, in my opinion of course. The movie is a high-adrenaline rush full of extreme sports stunts, high-octane driving, one seriously cool Pontiac, and Vin Diesel as the coolest spy this side of Bond. But better than Bond? No way, no how, and any critic that says so is lying through his teeth to please Sony.

Where James Bond, and the 18 movies under his belt, deliver a more cerebral type of spy movie, it is nice to see someone give the standard spy-work a nice kick in the ass to get it into a different gear, but Bond has grown over the years since the disastrous times of Timothy Dalton, and the movies have been getting more and more in touch with high tech gadgets and big explosions, while keeping the thinking man’s spy action alive.

Vin Diesel is Xander Cage, or X as his friends like to call him (stupid nickname, by the way). Xander is well known for video taping his death-defying stunts and making money off of them, a la Jackass. He is so famous that professionals like Tony Hawk (who must have sold his soul to Sony) and Mat Hoffman both appear in the movie to show Xander how much they look up to him. Yeah right…

Which brings up this movies biggest problem, it isn’t believable in any way, shape, or form. At no time during the movie do you believe there is any real danger to any of the characters, and with the cliché “cop switching sides” and “bad guy finds out who you are” plot points inputted between avalanches and a race through Prague in a GTO (sweeeet) you never feel a real connection to the characters because you know they will be okay.

Even before the movie was released in theatres this past weekend, Sony already made it a point to tell everyone that a sequel was on the way. So we know the main character doesn’t die, and all of the satellite characters are meaningless, because if Bond movies prove anything, aside from M, Moneypenny, and Q no one makes the cut to be in a second, third, fourth, or even 19th movie.

The stunts are unreal, but very fun to watch, and while I mentioned they are completely impossible, you still get a kick wondering how they did such a feat. While I don’t think a motocross bike can base jump over a 20 foot fence, or that it can fly over a huge warehouse with a jump off of a trailer, they are still cool things to see. The biggest disappointment was the drastic under use of the spy car. Most of the trailers hyped the card to include tons of weapons and gadgets (wait till you see the dash), but when the time comes the only thing they use are two rockets and a harpoon gun. Yippee! Exciting to say the least.

The movie is the mindless fun we came to expected from Rob Cohen, director of The Fast and the Furious, it has no real plot, events that happen don’t make much sense, but it sure is a cool movie to watch, and watch it you will.

I went into Reign of Fire not knowing what to expect from the movie. I had read several reviews, both mixed, so I really wasn’t sure what kind of movie this was going to be. To be perfectly honest, up until about two months before the film was released last Friday, I had not idea it even existed, which isn’t necessarily a case of bad marketing, just maybe some bad exposure to the consumer. Besides all of the trivial, “What was it going to be like?” questions, I wondered if it could come out from behind Men in Black II’s shadow and hopefully stomp on Tom Hanks’ Road to Perdition.

Reign of Fire was an excellent movie, and one wonders why it didn’t beat out the two movies listed above in the box office, but as my friend Thomas Porter said to me during our screening of the movie on Sunday, “This is sure to be a cult classic.”

So does Reign of Fire have the ability to join the ranks of Pulp Fiction and Army of Darkness as one of the great cult fiction movies of our generation? Yes, in many ways.

The movie focuses on the awakening of a pre-historic dragon species that every couple of thousand years comes out of their slumber to reek havoc upon the world. They caused the extinction of the Dinosaurs, they caused the Ice Ages with the ash that plagued the sky and cooled the planet, they help evolution along in some ways. But when a young boy named Quinn awakens the dominant male of the species it only takes a matter of years before the cities of the Earth are in ruins, and the human species could be the next on the Endangered Species List.

Still many would hear the plot, and think this is your typical post-apocalyptic movie with humans struggling to survive after a nuclear explosion/deadly plague/or undiscovered species (pick one). This isn’t no Waterworld, and Matthew McConaughey is one bad-ass in this movie as Van Zan the leader of an American troop of soldiers who have killed hundreds of these flying beasts. When they learn that it all started in London, they set out on a mission to destroy the dominant male and the species, for good.

While most plot points are predictable, and several overly used theatrical elements are present (like killing a main character), the movie excels past them, and is amazing in the visual department of a very grey, dark world where fire has consumed the planet. Luckily, the use of the dragon special effects were never overused, and there is only a few instances where you actually get a good look at one, and boy do they look pretty.

Reign of Fire is a popcorn movie, but after seeing Men in Black II last week and having some time to reflect upon it, I would have much rather have seen Reign because of the fact this movie has nothing to prove, it is just good story telling and good direction. Excellent movie, excellent cast, makes for an excellent time. Don’t’ miss this one.

So here we are five days after the release of Men in Black II and I’m just finally getting out of the house to see it. Why did it take me so long to get off my lazy ass an off to the theatre? Because I’m beginning to hate going to the movies on opening day and getting trampled by people who just got off of the “net” and read some “reviews” and can tell me every plot point before it finally happens. See I don’t need someone to tell me because those of us with brains bigger than a dog’s left-nut can figure out movies for ourselves. Anyway, I’m becoming skewed…

Men in Black II is the latest and supposedly greatest in the line of summer movies, I even predicted it would be the biggest movie of the summer, but who really expected Spider-Man to destroy records like it did, I sure didn’t. The movie stars Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith as agents of the top secret organization that polices alien activity on the planet earth. When seeing the first movie five years ago you wondered how they would get Agent K back into the line-up and in the movie, and how they would get agent L to drop out (which was done very stupidly by the way).

Anyway when a mysterious light is hidden on earth and the universe’s biggest bad-ass-lingerie-model comes looking for it, things get heated and the only man who knows how to stop it had his memory erased five years earlier. After bringing K back, the movie really picks up because of the on-screen duo between Smith and Jones.

What directory Barry Sonnenfeld seemed like he was doing for the the sequel was take the best parts of the first movie and give them bigger parts in the second. The highlight of the movie is Frank the Pug, who is giving a much elongated part in this sequel compared to his two minutes of screen time in the first. But, unfortunately, along with some of the better characters that are broadened, some of the same old jokes are returned and reversed to either A) try them again or B) see if anyone remembers. For the most part they clicked, but some, most the regurgitated stuff from before, didn’t work out so well and seemed to fall flat.

I was a bit concerned when I saw the initial trailer for the movie because it lacked the outstanding humor of the first, but I’m safe in saying that, while not as funny as the first, Men in Black II is a very funny movie and is the perfect mix between action and comedy.

My only complaint? The movie is over way to quickly. We got through five trailers, the movie, and half of the credits in under two hours which is far too short for a movie competing this summer for attention with so many dynamic movies, and those who already downloaded them from net (but that is another story). While I may have been very presumptuous when I stated this would be the biggest movie of the summer, it did break some records for a July 4th opening, and just may very well stay around to make a whole lot of money, but in the end it still can’t compare to the original, and not many things do.