Author Archives: abstractviews

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

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

The Avengers the movie, is a mishmash grouping of Marvel super-heroes.

It’s disappointingly busy. Busy in the sense that we have far too many “heroes” being focused on. So many that the character building can’t occur properly, even in the 2 1/2 hours of screen time. Add to that disappointment, they turned Ironman into a complete ass-hole. In the original Ironman movie, he was a somewhat complicated character that hid behind the appearance of being a head strong smart ass. In The Avengers, that all he is, an endless tirade of annoying smart ass one-liners that causes you simply to hate the character. This Ironman character brings the movie down by at least 2 points.

The action is fine, the movie is well done in general, but between the characters being stretched too thin and Ironman being a thorn in the viewers side, I was hoping for better.

7/10 is doing the story a favour.

A spoiled rich girl decides to do a geek a favour and give him a make-over so he can get a girl, only to fall for him herself.

Yawn…old story. Yawn…poorly implemented. Yawn..simply boring. Professionally made, but too cute, perfect and overly lame.

4/10

A vain self absorbed rich high school student (Alex Pettyfer) is turned into an ugly duckling by a teenage witch (played badly by Mary-Kate Olsen.)

A good basic plot, with juvenile writing that tries too hard to be trendy, and a story that moves along far to quickly in an attempt to get the whole thing into 80’some minutes.

Alex Pettyfer’s British accent comes out numerous times in the first part of the movie, which he seems to get a grip on later in production.

The intent of the curse was to make Kyle ugly, yet that isn’t what happened. They obviously thought it would not be appreciated by young people if they actually made him unattractive. So instead he looks like a good looking guy that has intentionally self mutilated himself with odd piercing, custom tattoos, artistic cuts and shaving his head. The only ugly makeup they put on him was a couple of blisters by his nose.

This should have been a far better movie. It comes across as an after-school special with the only interest in conveying a moral learning experience to teens with a short attention span.

6/10

A factionary account of the disturbing last days of Edgar Allan Poe’s life.

John Cusack plays Poe very well. I enjoy John Cusack in most roles he plays.

To say to much about this film would be to spoil it. If you are a fan of Edgar Allan Poe, John Cusack, and/or aggressive and suspenseful period pieces, then you should like this story. It’s a thinkers movie, and you have to pay attention to get everything out of it that you need to.

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
Edgar Allan Poe

8/10

I’m not even sure if this is considered the fourth Starship Troopers movie, or just one of the many additional videos in the franchise. I can tell you this one is adult style animated, with nudity and swearing, so not a kids film.

It has a distinct first person shooter video game theme and feel. The first few minutes are mainly rapid fire shooting and high pitched alien bug screams, that drove our pet parrot into a crazy frenzy, and flew around the room screaming much like the dying bug monsters. I had to wonder if the origin of the bug squeals are angry birds.

It’s not a bad movie, relatively entertaining, but most likely only to fans of Starship Troopers.

One annoying thing in this story is how most of the male characters all look alike, and sound alike. It was hard for me to tell most soldiers apart. They all seem to have short spiky dark hair and similar muscular builds. You have to watch for scares and tattoos more than faces, cause these white people all look a like to me.

The few female characters look different, but also all sound the same. And they are shown naked as least as much as they are shown clothed, if that does anything for you. Full frontal nudity for the animated women, but not the men. No equal rights here.

5/10

Battleship, supposedly based on the board game according to the credits, is a mix of Transformers style hardware, Independence Day save the world movie plot, and US Navy recruitment commercial.

The “hero” is a life long half-wit screw-up, that is forced into the navy by his older brother, because he is such a loser and can’t be left alone. And this goof-ball ends up saving the world, but only due to everyone around him being insubordinate and constantly reminding him not to do stupid things.

This movie is shot with the same intent that a propaganda film is made during a war. It could be used as a US Navy recruitment commercial with few changes. In fact it is done so much so that it ruins the film, and keeps it from being enjoyable science fiction. This movie could have been so much better if they would have worried less about being so strangely patriotic, and more concerned about making a good Sci-Fi movie.

Why is it that that every alien race in Hollywood science fiction that comes to Earth lands in the US, and can be so easily defeated? Apparently if you have the ability and technology to travel endless light years to Earth, you also have endless flaws in your character and technology that allows Americans to kick your ass in a few days and wipe them out. This movie takes the win over superior alien race technology to a whole new level. To say more would be a spoiler.

6/10