Monthly Archives: September 2012

Netflix Sucks

I’ve never been that interested in Netflix. I find their service in general very interesting, but up until last year (I think it was) we couldn’t get Netflix in Canada. When they started offering their service here I checked out the video offerings, and found that there was nothing they had that interested me. All the movies were lame or quite old. And anything else I could get on Shaw cable, including newer and better movies.

Today I received a special offer in the mail with a code to allow me 1 free trial month. So I thought, what the hell, I’ll maybe give it a try. But it turned out that they expect you to give them your credit card number, and sign up as a regular member. And you then have to deal with the restrictions of trying to cancel at some point before the trial ends. What a scam and waste of my time. I’ve dealt with this sort of “free” nonsense before with other companies, and it’s never easy to cancel once they have your credit card info.

So I try to find some way for a non-member to email them and point out the disappointment with this “special offer”. Well there seems to be no way to contact them if you aren’t a member. That’s assuming that members do get some way of contacting them. Correction, they instruct you to call an 800 number, but no email addresses. I suppose that way their call centre has one more kick at my cat. Don’t try to kick my cat Netflix!

So not only do I feel they have little to offer me video wise, but now they have annoyed and soured me to the company further. Good job Netflix.

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

A dramatic remake of the fairy tale Snow White. But not the prettified Disney version we all know, but a dark and sinister story.

I liked this movie, except for one thing, Snow White. I don’t like Kristen Stewart as an actor, as she is an absolutely horrible actress in my opinion. In my mind, she is one of those phenomenons of Hollywood, where there seems to be no rhyme or reason to someone becoming an actor or celebrity, other than perhaps being at the right place at the right time or knowing someone with a great deal of influence. Regardless, she brings nothing to this movie or the character. The only thing worse than her acting is her British accent. Then again, Charlize Theron English accent is also poor. So if it weren’t for the disappointing portrayal of Snow White, and the bad fake British accents, I would have given this movie 3 more points, as everything else was very well done.

6/10

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Catch.44 (2011)

Just when you thought you saw a lot of bad movies, “Catch .44” comes along and ruins your movie watching time all over again.

It’s about 3 dumb ass loser women that get a kick out of hurting other people, and would rather work part time for a drug trafficker than work-for-a-living at dead-end jobs. But they apparently aren’t very good at doing either very well.

They try to make the plot seem complicated, but it’s simply confusing, and you soon don’t care. It’s bloody, gory and tedious. Bruce Willis has a rather small part, and he looks like a drowned rat that’s missing half it’s hair. His appearance is disturbing.

If you watch this movie, you will look like the character in the frame below. Shot, bloody, and being held up by a bar seat.

3/10

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There is only one good thing about this movie, and that’s a joke that gets told near the beginning. And to save you the pain of having the watch this barf bait, I’ll re-tell it in my own words:

Four nuns are waiting to give confession. The first nun goes in to the confessional and tells the priest that she has sinned, she has looked at a man’s penis. The priest shows his disapproval and tells her to say 3 Hail Mary’s and splash holly water in her eyes from the church’s basin. The other three sisters watch as the nun splashes holly water in her face.

The next nun confesses her sins to the priest, and tells him that she has touched a man’s penis. The priest tells her to say 6 Hail Mary’s and go out and wash her hands in the holly water.

The priest hears a commotion outside his confessional and the next two nuns and quite agitated. One of them tells the other, “I don’t care what he says, “I’m not drinking that holly water after you sit in it!”

The Dinosaur Project (2012)

A British adventurer, his son, and a film crew walk into a bar…I mean discover a secret part of Africa where dinosaurs still exist. My review starts out like it might be a joke, but the jokes on you if you watch this movie, as it’s really bad! You’ll be groaning by the end cause it’s such a bad joke.

The concept that these particular modern day people could be the first to discover a huge area where giant dinosaur lizards exist, and no one else know about it is simply ridiculous for a movie plot. In fact the pterodactyls in the movie are so prevalent in the sky that they accident crash into their helicopter. So how stupid is it to think in this day and age that no one would have discovered the dinosaurs before now? And that plot problem is just one in the list of issues I had with this stinker.

Intended to appear to be shot in the worthless and annoying Blair Witch handy-cam style, the fake video capture attempt is beyond lame and is not consistent throughout the movie. The acting is bad, the plot is thin, and the movie just suddenly ends leaving you shocked the credits are running and you didn’t realize the story was over. But then you are very grateful that it has!

3/10

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Men in Black 3 (2012)

If you are planning to see this movie, you are already familiar with the franchise and the plot. It’s the exact same Men in Black plot as the last 4 flicks in the series. They aren’t so much sequels as they are remakes of themselves with the same characters. Nothing new here since the first movie. The original Men in Black was somewhat unique and that made it interesting and fun. Every one since (including this one) is unmemorable and mediocre in every way, as will the next one be – at best.

5/10

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Safe (2012)

A young girl who is a mathematical genius, is kidnapped by the mob to memorize codes and debts. She becomes the interest of another competing mob and dirty police. A suicidal boxer known as the Garbage-Man is our hero, and decides to save her from all these bad people.

Lots of fight scenes, gun fire and car chases. Very Rambo movie like, where we have endless gun fire and beatings directed at the hero with barely a cut or bruise, he can do no wrong, and doesn’t get hurt. So fun to watch but completely unrealistic, as this guy kills uncountable people, and dozens of men can shot at him as he runs around and he doesn’t get a scratch. But unlike Rambo, he does pick up a different gun now and again that is conveniently fully loaded so he has an excuse why he never runs out of bullets. And because he kills so many guys so easily, there are endless free weapons all around him to pick up and use.

If this movie were a first person shooter video game, you’d be a player with no limit on the number of lives. It’s fun at first, then you realize there is no challenge.

6.5/10

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The Cold Light of Day (2012)

A reasonably well done spy-verses-spy action/drama that stars the hottie Henry Cavill from Immortals and soon to be the new Superman. We also have the excellent actors Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver.

There is a story, nice scenery, considerable action, gun fire, car chases, spilt blood, a little shirtless muscle, some attitude, your typical entertaining movie recipe items for this movie type.

The camera work left something to be desired, there could have been better angles, close-ups, panning, zooming, it was shot more European style then Hollywood. This movie would look 30% better with some modern action movie cinematography. The video work has an amateur feel to it all the way through. Next time spend a few more bucks on direction, camera people and editors!

7/10

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Recreator (2012)

This is a strange one. Watching this movie is like trying to take your eyes off an accident.

Three teenagers go camping. They find a large mysterious empty house and help themselves to the washroom. Their sewage ends up contaminating the ooze from an old secret experiment out back, that causes anyone that dumps in this house’s toilet to be cloned from the mud in the back yard. Ya that is a spoiler, but like I said, if you decide to waste your time watching this movie, you’ll be cursed to want to see what boring ridiculous nonsense happens next.

Cinematography wise this movie is really well done. And the acting is horrid. These no-bodies must have been hired from the early stages of an acting class. They are never scared, never excited, never concerned, and often look like they will fall a sleep. In fact the lead girl looks stoned the whole shoot, both the “real” character and the clone. Someone get her some tape to hold her eye lids open!

Watch at your own risk. And don’t crap in a strangers toilet while camping.

4/10

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Dark Shadows (2012)

A Tim Burton’s comedy about a dim-witted vampire that is resurrected in the 70’s after 200 years.

Done is the typical Tim Burton’s style, but definitely lacking the sharp whit and spark of a classic like Edward Scissor Hands. It’s beautiful to watch and expertly done, and completely dull.

6/10

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Google Kills Another Free Service

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Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=Winnipeg%2C+MB&hl=en): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden in…

Google seems to have a pattern of developing cool nich projects using their huge resources, releasing them for free to the public, and then killing them with short or no notice. I can only assume it might be due to rolling them into some other product, or finding no financial gain for them internally. One of these recently was an “undocumented” weather API service, for retrieving world wide weather information.

I personally have been using this for a while now, after developing a PHP script to update a web page on one of my own websites. I know weather info can be found almost anywhere these days, but not easily for free without ads, limitations or some annoyance. I simply wanted a weather page with current stats and forecasts. Now I’ll have to adapt it to some other service.

Thanks Google! What did it really cost you to share the weather API with the few people around the world that made use of it? Was it cutting into your $billions$ in the bank to share a little weather info freely? Is it evil to kill these truly free services (no ads revenue) when Google is already so incredibly profitable?