Reviews – Page 52

'The Hangover' movie poster — Every bit as crazy as it looks

My rating of The Hangover: A++ (Far out!)
Cast: Justin Bartha (“Doug”, the bridegroom), Bradley Cooper (“Phil”), Ed Helms (“Dr Faggot”), Zach Galifianakis (“Superhero for this Legendary Pictures movie”), STINGLAI KA’ABI
Directed by: Todd Phillips
Studio: Warner Bros / Legendary Pictures

Originally posted at Youthpad.

You walk in with expectations that a movie directed by Todd Phillips – one of the story writers of Borat – to be funny. The Hangover meets those expectations that you have and then surpasses them. This movie, surely, is going to get an Oscar nomination – most definitely going to win in the screenplay category.

When I saw the trailer/ read blurbs, it sounded so incredibly outrageous that I didn’t know whether to believe this movie would be good or not. Movies with good trailers are often terrible. On top of that, Legendary Pictures financed this film. The same Legendary Pictures famous for superhero movies such as Batman Begins, Superman Returns, Somebody Else Goes Away, 300 (“Rah rah dick flick!“), and The Jaagte Raho Group.

[yahoo 12767208]
Watch the trailer for The Hangover

The movie delivers exactly the Mike Tyson-ish punch of laughter that the trailer promises. The show had a jam-packed theatre and everyone was convulsed with laughter. (I, of course, kept laughing throughout the whole show – even during the intermission when I went to the washroom; hmm, that got a few people staring.) The story is about four guys who go to Las Vegas for their friend’s bachelor party. We get to see just about this bit before it cuts to the day after their partying. They find that their friend who’s supposed to get married two days later is missing. Also, they discover that in their suite they have a hen, a tiger, somebody else’s baby, a missing tooth, a stolen cop car – and no memory at all of what they did last night. Turns out that one of the group spiked the drinks they had with roofies (the ‘date rape drug’), thinking that it was Ecstasy. Hilarity ensues.

SPOILER SPILLER ALERT!!! DON’T BUY ANY DRINKS WHILE WATCHING THIS MOVIE BECAUSE YOU’LL MOST PROBABLY END UP SPILLING THE WHOLE THING.

That’s the basic setting. The main act is about the guys trying to find out where their friend is so that they can get him back in time for his marriage. Along the way they find out they won $80000 at casino, have a Chinese guys who says ‘motherfucker’ in a sing-song voice in their car’s trunk, one of them pulled his own tooth out and then married a stripper. Oh well. You get the idea don’t you. Lest you misunderstand, none of this is slapstick / lame comedy that American Pie series type movies have. There are very subtle parodies of casino movies such as 21 [my rating – A+ (Oscar-worthy)]. (Boy, that scene at a blackjack table is friggin’ hilarious!)

The story has a raw ad-libbed feel to it, along the lines of Borat. It’s scene-based and full of visual puns. Many of the jokes are straightforward, but there are quite a few intellectual / pop-culture reference based jokes too. A special note for the character of Alan (played by Zach Galifianakis) bakes the cake, eats it, haves it too, and then gets a Michelin three-star rating purely based on the analysis of what he craps out.

Each and every dialogue, each and every klutzy move by the characters trying to retrace their steps in search of a friend is so funny – and endearing at one level. The Hangover has amazing re-watch value you too. In the words of a wise-man-crack, “It’s a movie for which you can buy the original DVD and download a ripped version, then play both of them at the same time for extra laughs.” There is simply NO WAY that you should miss this movie.

Resident Evil: Extinction

Originally posted at Youthpad.

My rating of Resident Evil: Extinction: C- (Disappointing)
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Oded Fehr, Mike Epps, Iain Glen, Ali Larter, Ashanti
Directed by: Russell Mulcahy
Studio: Screen Gems, Sony Pictures

Resident Evil: Extinction isn’t worth the kilobytes that I’m using in my blog’s database for its review. I’ll still go ahead as this movie was a box office blockbuster. What exactly audiences saw in this is beyond my comprehension. A good example of why you shouldn’t believe Hollywood behind-the-scenes special shows. One thing that I’ve noticed is that when a movie is spectacularly bad, what studios tend to do is divert all those dollars to the behind-the-scenes department to jazz it up. Bad movies have actors babbling on and on on how fun the set was, how ‘visionary’ the director was, “Oh wowz thiz iz totully ossumz!” Ashanti bitches (while smiling of course) that she had to spend “so much time in the hot hot sun”; turns out her role was about 10 minutes long on-screen.

The first Resident Evil [my rating – A- (almost perfect)] still had something of a story to go on, but Resident Evil 3 doesn’t bother much with that. A simple 10-second long time-lapse sequence has the whole the Earth turned into a desert. Apparently Mr President, Department of Defense, Pentagon Cronies & Co haven’t survived the apocalypse. Everything is sorta ruled over by Umbrella Corp now. In an isolated Hive-like facility boffins are working on a cure for the T-virus from Alice (Milla Jovovich) clones. Elsewhere survivors are on the run from the undead. Rest everything is hack n’ slash with a dash of Alice’s new power of roasting crows, sending shockwaves in melee combat, playing with khukris, and levitating motorcycles. Who exactly do you think you’re kidding when at least three members of the crew are credited as ‘crow trainers’?

Of course you don’t expect anything deep and philosophical from a zombie movie. RE3 disappoints even in action and visuals. The only visual even remotely worth watching is a scene of post-apocalyptic Las Vegas simply because it’s so unique. Every other frikkin’ movie which has ever had to show always has that standard silly montage of one casino sign after another, a few advert billboards, then a shot of a few theatres; at some point one of the protagonists will lean out of the car / vehicle s/he is travelling in to ‘marvel the sights’. (Heck, even Bolt has critters standing outside the Bellagio admiring its fountain.) The so-called ‘Super Undead’ Umbrella Corp’s research scientist unleashes on the survivors (whom Alice has joined by now) to kill them off in Las Vegas turn out to be pretty lame actually. Not because they’re not badass, but the way these supposedly ‘super-fast’ and ‘intelligent’ zombies get killed within 15 minutes makes you wonder whether they would have survived an assault even from Ewoks.

Special effects are terrible. Explosions look so terribly fake – something you don’t expect from a blockbuster movie in this era. Seen the kind of explosions South Park uses? RE3 has explosions similar to that. The much-touted crow attack scene – compared to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (which itself is quite a lame movie; my rating for that would be C-) in behind-the-scenes – wasn’t anything very spectacular. The mutated Tyrant towards the end is done well though.

Sony Pictures always acts like a dick with any movie they associate themselves with. Once again, we are ‘regaled’ with endless shots of Sony products. Who cares if nobody else survived the apocalypse? Umbrella Corp must have its share of Sony Vaio laptops and Milla Jovovich must use a Sony short wave radio. Damned nonfunctional cellphone towers. They couldn’t sneak zombies checking text messages on Sony Ericsson phones in.

[yahoo 4143954]

Watch the theatrical trailer for Resident Evil: Extinction

Resident Evil 3 is a movie which feels made up entirely of poorly done video game cut-scenes. Nothing other than an avenue for Milla Jovovich to make money. She has worked herself into a corner where she can’t shake off this Resident Evil type role.