Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Balls Of Fury: "I'm going to Disneyland"

I use to see sneak previews all of the time. It felt like I was going every week. Somehow I got too busy working out, taking boxing lessons, or just sitting at home doing nothing, that I forgot how much fun they are. You can say, “I saw movie x and it was pretty good”. When they say, “Is that out already?” you can say, “No! It’s not out yet” with a smile on your face, leaving them a little puzzled as to how you saw the movie. Last night I had the pleasure of seeing a sneak preview of the new comedy Balls Of Fury.

BOF is a tale about an ex ping-pong champion Randy Daytona (Dan Folger) who is brought out of retirement by FBI Agent Rodriquez (George Lopez) to catch a dangerous criminal, Mr. Feng (Christopher Walken).

After being out of the game for so long Daytona is trained by a blind man Master Wong (James Hong) and his niece Maggie (Maggie Q). They both put Daytona through grueling training to get him ready for Feng’s tournament. Maggie Q is the “eye candy” for the movie. She’s definitely going to be bumped up on next year’s Maxims Hot 100 after her roles Live Free or Die Hard and BOF.

This movie has so many comical references to Enter The Dragon. The group travels to Feng’s island compound which is very reminiscence of Mr. Han’s compound in Enter the Dragon. Even down the scene in ETD where all the fighters are practicing, there is a scene just like it in BOF put instead of martial arts, it’s ping pong.

BOF has some great characters Mr. Wong is funny and there is a lot of subtle jokes they use about him being blind. Him not facing people while he’s talking, and asking “What just happened? What am I missing?”

Daytona’s nemesis is German Karl Wolfschtagg (Reno 911’s Thomas Lennon). He beat Daytona back in the ’88 Olympics and has showed up at Feng’s tournament to win it all. Karl is extremely sarcastic, rude and hilarious all at the same time.

Walken is great as Feng. He has great timing with his jokes in the movie, not to mention all the ridiculous outfits and sunglasses he randomly shows up in. I can’t tell if he’s a alien or a vampire. The first time I can remember seeing Christopher Walken was when I was a kid in that movie The Dead Zone. He was pretty creepy in that. Who knew that 24 years later I’d be laughing at him in comedies.

My Suggestion: BOF is a great comedy. May not be the funniest movie I’ve seen all year, but worth the matinee price for a good laugh. If not for the great ping pong scenes, see it for Christopher Walken and his futuristic vampire outfits.

My grade: 3.0- Not the best student, but it pays to show a little effort when nobody else is.

Monday, August 27, 2007

W-A-R is B-A-D

All summer I’ve sworn that Pirates Caribbean 3 was by far the worst movie I’ve seen. That was until Saturday afternoon when I went to go see Jet Li and Jason Statham star in War. I got together with three of my good friends and I must say we were all very excited to see this movie. None of us really had high expectations. We wanted to see an “ok” plot, some good action, a few laughs , and a big finish. Let’s just say we got none of the things on our wish list.

Statham plays Crawford an FBI agent who’s a complete bad (you know what) that works in San Francisco’s Chinatown. He knows martial arts and speaks fluent Chinese. One day Crawford’s partner Tom (Terry Chen) and his wife and daughter are killed by Rouge (Jet Li). Fast forward to 3 years later and Crawford is obsessed with the case and is divorced from his wife because of it. He’s spent the last few years trying to find Rouge, who for some reason changes his face every six months.

We all know what happens next. Rouge shows up again and Crawford is on the case. This time Rouge is starting a war between two crime families, the Triads and Yakuza. The two families feud with Rouge and Crawford’s battle caught somewhere in the middle.

The only reason I had a problem with this film was because it could have been a B+ film, and somehow it ended up being a C- (and that may be generous). The fight scenes with Jet Li and the cool cars saved the film, and now make it a rental.

Some of the movies funnier moments come from Wick (Mathew St. Patrick) who is an FBI agent. Now it’s not anything that his character does in the film, but how horrible his acting was. I’m sure if you look him up on IMDB you’ll see he has a nice body of work. War was definitely not one of his best performances. The guy looks like Barry Bonds and Theo from the Cosby show had a kid. I’m still wondering how he got that part in this movie.

The plot stunk! There was a twist at the end that really made no sense at all, and the ending was terrible. I was hoping to see this great fight scene between Jet Li and Jason Statham, and that didn’t happen. I thought I’d get some good action and that didn’t happen either. I’m not sure what direction this movie was going. It seemed to be all over the place at times. The crime bosses didn’t seem bad enough. You always need a good villain and the villains in this film were a little too happy. They gave us no real reason to cheer for Crawford as he chases Rouge all over town. I found myself cheering for Rouge more than anything.

My suggestion: Don’t see it. Rent it if you REALLY love Jet Li or have a taste for bad movies. Me and my friends were very disappointed. We discussed the movie and tried to salvage what we could. Ultimately we all decided it was one of the worst movies of the summer.

My grade- 2.2: You failed your final. Now you have to face the music at home. Maybe you should stay at your friends house until your parents cool off.

Monday, August 20, 2007

High School High

I loved my time in High School. I attended a ton of schools from grades K thru 12th grade, 12 total to be exact. My remaining three years being spent at Garfield High School. Some of the craziest, funniest, wildest years of my young life. With that said I really enjoy high school movies. I think they are a riot. Sometimes I look at characters and feel like that’s me on screen, but most of the time I think it allows writers, directors or whoever else is working on the film to relive their high school days.

Superbad is a film about two high school friends Evan (Michael Cera) and Seth (Jonah Hill) living their last two weeks of high school. When their friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) gets a fake ID (under the name McLovin) they are asked to bring alcohol to the party where the girls of their dreams are. Seth’s plan is to get drunk and lose his virginity to Jules (Emma Stone). Evan just wants to tell his dream girl Becca (Martha MacIsaac) how he feels.

With most plans you make in high school, things quickly get out of hand. McLovin is punched in a robbery at the liquor store. Now with no money and no liquor Seth and Evan scramble to find ways to get alcohol or they have no chance of hooking up with the girls of their dreams.

Fogell aka McLovin is one of the funniest characters in the movie. He’s this nerd who I don’t think realizes he’s not really all that cool. He talks like a wannnabe gangster and makes this scratching sound with his voice. McLovin spends most of the movie with two incompetent police officers Slater (Bill Hader) and Michaels (Seth Rogen). These two cops run around town not doing their jobs and playing light sabers with thier flashlights. To protect and to serve is the last thing on their minds.

Seth spends most of the movie sounding like he’s going to lose his mind over not hooking up with Jules. He blast Fogell with insult after insult. Sometimes it out of frustration and others because he considers Fogell not to be the coolest guy on the planet. A lot of Seth’s scenes provide some the movies vulgar and hilarious moments.

Although this movie is a riot to watch, and almost non-stop humor from beginning to end, there are some good points to the movie. You get to see how two friends deal with going off to different schools, underage drinking, high school parties, trying to have enough guts to tell a girl how they feel, and just trying to fit in. The movie is great because it tackles those issues and never misses a beat.

My Suggestion: May be the funniest movie of the year. This movie is not kids or anyone who’s offended easily. It’s really one of those R rated, vulgar, offensive, high school movies. Although it’s a tale as old as time, the movie seems pretty fresh. Maybe it’s the string of PG-13 comedy that has been out the past few years. In the film they try some new gags and new bits in the film that I’m sure some new movies will try and copy. You’ll be seeing a ton of kids using the name McLovin. It’s already the name of my Fantasy Football team. “What’s up Gangstas?”

My Grade: 3.7 – Keep this up and you’ll get into any party you want to all year long.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

3 The Hard Way

I have a personal rule about the third installment of movies and that’s the John Starks Rule. John Starks was a great 3 point shooter for the New York Knicks in the 90’s. Starks was some fans favorite Knick and some others most hated player because of how streaky he was. When he was on he was ON (wipe him down), but when he wasn’t he really wasn’t. That’s how I feel about third installments for movies. Sometimes the third a movie can work well. Movies like Die Hard with a Vengeance, Mission Impossible 3, Return of the Jedi, The Return of the King, and most recently Oceans 13 and Spiderman 3. Most of the time these movies are not so good. The only problem is that the list for movies that don’t work is much, much longer. Some of the worst ones I can remember are Back to the Future 3, Beverly Hills Cop 3, The Matrix Revolutions, Blade Trinity, Scream 3, The Godfather 3, Fast and The Furious Tokyo Drift, and most recently Pirates of the Caribbean at Worlds End (Yes I’m still mad about it)

The only way the Starks Rule works is that people have to buy in to the first two movies. Starks was a great player and has been involved in some of the NBA’s greatest moments. He would score 35 one night and the next night this same guy would shoot you out the game. That’s how those movies are. The first movie has to be good and the sequel has to be at least tolerable but you don’t have to love it. It has to pull you in enough so that when the third movie is as entertaining as watching old people shuffle board, you feel like you’ve been wronged in some way. You give the guy at the ticket booth a look like, “You knew this movie sucked and you let me buy a ticket anyway. Why didn’t you warn me?”

Rush Hour 3 had the potential to land on either side. I went in wanting the movie to be entertaining enough that I didn’t feel like I was robbed without a gun or any use of force but not enough so that Bret Ratner would be sitting at home this spring writing a script that involved Lee and Carter going to Australia and fighting Aborigine Triads steroid smugglers.

Rush Hour picks up where it left off. Carter (Chris Tucker) is a uniform cop directing traffic. (After all this guys done he’s directing traffic? How’s this possible?) Lee (Jackie Chan) is protecting Ambassador Han (Tzi Ma) as he is about to expose a secret of one of the world’s most dangerous gangs. Han is shot as he delivers his speech and his daughter Soo Yung’s (Jingchu Zhang) life is in danger as well. Carter and Lee set off to find who is responsible. This search leads them to Paris.

The two are joined by Genevieve (Noemie Lenoir) and their cab driver George (Yvan Attal) who provides some funny dialogue. The movie starts off funny and continues to be funny all the way through. A few of their bits work and some of them seem really forced, but I did laugh out loud a few times. A lot of the humor seems to be Chris Tucker just being Chris Tucker and how comfortable he seems on screen with Jackie and how well they work together.

I always felt that the first two were good action movies that were funny. I felt that this movie was a funny movie with some okay action. None of the fight scenes made me say “ohhhhhhhhh”. The movie was missing something.

The plot itself was crazy and didn’t really make sense at all. The ending was pretty terrible. I thought my 10 year old niece wrote it. The crazy thing is I was laughing so much that I didn’t realize it until the end of the movie.

My Suggestion: This movie reminds me of the good John Starks. Go see it. I know I may have made it sound like Ernest Goes to Jail meets Shanghi Surprise but it is worth seeing. The comedy alone is worth the trip. It’s no Spiderman 3 or Return of the Jedi but definitely not Blade Trinity or that Pirate nonsense.

My Grade: 3.0 – You only passed because you were funny in class all year long. Great job!

Monday, August 13, 2007

I spy you…...spying me!

I have to admit that I wasn’t really ever a fan of Matt Damon. It wasn’t until I watched the Departed and I hated him through the whole movie. The only other Damon movies I can stand are the Bourne movies.

I really liked the first movie a lot. When I went to see Bourne Supremecy I was on a “date” I’m with all of my friends and they know how much I wanted to see this movie. She gets up and leaves about 20 minutes into the movie. She’s gone for about 5-10 minutes and so since she’s technically my date I get up to go check on her. I find her outside the theater sitting down on a bench and she’s crying talking about how sick she was and she couldn’t watch it. The camera jerked around too much. So being the nice guy I am I sat outside with her for the remainder of the movie. Since it didn’t really workout between us I feel like an idiot, but at the time I felt I did the right thing. If I’m on a date now I’ll give her a roll of quarters and she’ll play video games until I’m done.

This new Bourne is a one of those summer movies that comes up late. It reminds me of a politician who’ll throw his name out there late just to steal some votes.

The movie starts with some action as we see Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) still on the hunt for his true identity, battling bad guys as his amnesia at the same time. At the same time local newspaper reporter has been following Bourne’s story and wants to find out more about Treadstone and the people involved. The government has started a new group of young assasins codenamed Blackbriar. These guys are like Jason Bourne but younger and have cooler gadgets to use.

Bourne has help in this movie from Nicky (Julie Stiles. Who I swear is Alicia Silverstone 2007. I hope she can get it together and land some bigger roles) and Pamela Landy (Joan Allen who I loved in Face/Off)

The movie is full of action but there are some dry points. I’m not sure if it’s because I saw a 9:50 movie on a Friday night after a long week or the food coma I slipped into after Johnny Rockets or if those scenes were really that dry. When I think about it, I really liked the movie. There was nothing spectacular about it other than some cool fight scenes and you get to see Bourne tear people apart with the newest edition of US Weekly. I would love to see how the people at Treadstone teach that in fighting class.

My suggestion: Go see it if you’ve enjoyed the other two movies. It’s worth the $9.75 I spent and it was really a good movie to see with a group of guys. It’s a great way to end a run of good Summer movies.

My Grade: 3.0 – Way to go! Not fantastic but at least you can hold your head up when you tell people what your GPA is.

Convict Radio

There are few actors who seem to have roles in movies that I like. Don Cheadle happens to be one of them. I know if I see a trailer and it looks a little suspect and at the very end it says “Starring Don Cheadle” I’ll say “Hmmm doesn’t look half bad” The first time I can remember seeing him was on Hanging With Mr. Cooper. If I think about it, the first time I really saw him was when he played Rocket in the movie Colors. From then on it just seemed like a string of movies that I enjoyed Rosewood, Out Of Sight, Family Man, Traffic, Swordfish, Oceans 11., The Assassination Of Richard Nixon, Crash, Hotel Rwanda and now Talk to Me. This has to be one of the best movies I’ve seen this summer. Anything is better than Pirates of the Caribbean (yes I’m still bitter)

Talk To Me is based on the life of Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene (Don Cheadle) who was an ex-con turned radio personality in the D.C area. The movie follows Petey as he leaves prison and lands a job as the morning DJ at WOL-AM. Petey is given the job by Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who is in search for new talent to compete with a rival radio station.

During the film you see how Petey spoke to the people, for the people. It reminds me of one of my friend EJ landed job on ESPN to talk about sports. I could see him being completely bias to the Yankees, Lakers, and Barry Bonds. He would completely ignore Hockey, Soccer and Tennis. Petey’s story reminded me of sort of voice that’s missing today. He was a voice on the airways who wasn’t concerned about ratings, sponsors, or the FCC. He just wanted to “tell it like it is”. He wanted to talk about race the way people talked behind closed doors. He wanted to bring up topics that were on people’s hearts and were just too afraid to discuss. People didn’t just tune in to hear the great soul music he would play, but to hear what Petey had to say. 9 times out of 10 they felt the same way.

You don’t just see Petey as this great libertarian, you also get a chance to see his faults and how that had influence on his life. The same traps that our celebrities run into today. Alcohol, women, more alcohol, and more women.

One of the great storylines of the movie was Petey’s relationship with Dewey. Two men with different ways of doing things, but the same heart for the people. The movie does a great job of depicting their relationship as Petey goes from convict to radio icon.

This movie also has a wonderful, humorous performance from Taraji P Henson as Vernell, Petey’s girlfriend. Her hilarious outburst and even more hilarious choice of clothes really give the movie that extra laugh to help you swallow some of the seriousness in the film.

Talk To Me is a great film. Although it doesn’t fit with the rest of the Summer Blockbusters we’ve seen, it’s well worth the price of admission. It’s better than most movies I’ve seen this summer. I’m hoping this movie inspires some people to speak up and speak out like Petey did.

My suggestion: Go see it. If not for Don Cheadles performance at least for Petey’s story and for some of the movies funny moments.

My Grade: 3.5 – Keep it up. Maybe your parents will buy you a new car…………..or at least say they will to keep you working hard in school.