Author Archives: abstractviews

A campy buddy comedy, that takes three old friends on a treasure hunting camping trip in memory of their dead friend. Throw in comments of the classic movie Deliverance, deep south half-wits, D.B.Cooper, and a Burt Reynolds cameo, and you have the general picture of what’s in store.

A slightly higher level of comedy than most teenage/college movies, and thankfully not always the traditional fart, poop and puke scenes and jokes. It’s campy, silly and relaxing fun. It’s a timeless comedy, so long as you are old enough to know and appreciate who D.B.Cooper and Burt Reynolds are.

6/10

I think this movie was intended to be a romantic-comedy. It’s a story about driving a school teacher across the country for a job interview, and being chased by an ex-boyfriend and some criminals.

The whole movie has a strange feel to it, aside from appearing very low budget. In fact the first 30 minutes seems like it is entirely adlibbed, and just loosely based on a scene concept. I felt uncomfortable watching as the actors struggle to create a dialog much of the time. Surprising enough, the movie actually improves in the second half, if you can manage to sit through the first 45 minutes, which is not easy. They manager to create a few (and I mean few) humorous scenes in the second half that help redeem this awkward film.

The framing of the camera work has a distinctly amateurish feel, and despite the number of noticeable TV actors in the cast, you can easily imagine this movie was made in a very short period of time, and with few takes per scene (if more than one at all.)

4/10

The dog food isn’t the only thing that bites.

Do you like video games? Do you like first person shooters? Do you like to watch someone else play a first person shooter video game, and never be allowed to play yourself? If the answer to all of those is yes, you will love to sit through this movie…maybe. Cause the entire movie to designed around this feeling, that you are forced to watch someone else play a first person shooter video game, right down to the scene changes, level changes, and narration.

This is the third, fourth, maybe fifteenth (who cares) episode in the Resident Evil series. There have been better, but likely won’t be many worse. But good and bad in the Resident Evil franchise is perhaps relative.

If you love action movies, you have to just love Milla Jovovich. She’s drop dead pretty, a good actress, excellent in fight scenes and unlike most action stars, she can play the whole range of emotions. She’s always a treat to watch. I wish I could say the same for Resident Evil Retribution. But it simply is not a lot of fun to watch.

3/10

Dredd is a remake of the Sylvester Stallone movie in 1995, which was based on a British Sci-Fi comic book where future police become the judge and jury.

Part of this story’s shtick is that Judge Dredd never takes off his helmet. So we never see the hero’s face, not once. I’m not even sure we should call Dredd the hero, as he’s kind of an ass. Perhaps he’s better classified as the lead. It’s hard enough in many cookie cutter films these days to care about the leads, but to cover his face for the entire movie makes this stinker even more boring than it would be otherwise. And what’s worse is the guy in the helmet is hot, it’s Karl Urban, but you’ll never know he’s hot, cause he’s wearing an abundance of fake armour and the comic book goofy helmet the whole time. But they leave the helmet off the female co-lead with some bad excuse she lost it. And on top of that, she is one absolutely horrible actress. She needs a permanent helmet on her acting career, so we can’t see it.

If you don’t fall a sleep from the boring predictable action or the drone of Dredd’s “Batman voice”, or annoyed by the endless slow motion scenes intended to show off the 3D effects, you’ll be glad when this movie is finally over.

4/10

Two good looking young guys that openly share the same girlfriend, happen to be major players in the quality marijuana business in California. Their focus being on sales and not on self preservation, they become prime targets for a Mexican drug cartel that is looking to expand into the U.S.

The movie is somewhat disturbing. Disturbing in that there is graphic violence, and most of the characters tend to have a complete disregard for human life. That combined with being a well told storey that draws us in and feels personable, makes it uncomfortable and disturbing at times.

Narration at the end of the film, making a lame attempt at explaining the movie’s title, was the only thing about the movie I didn’t like. If you can’t see the correlation between torture and mass murder, and the word savages, you are simply too dumb to appreciate this movie. I don’t think we needed to have it explained to us, doing so is annoying and insulting.

Well told, well acted, unique, and with some unexpected twists, it will keep you focused on the screen.

8/10

Pitch Perfect is a satire on the TV show Glee, with enough differences to not be accused of being a complete rip-off.

This movie is a lot of fun. Watching Fat Amy and her friends compete for Sectionals, and the hijinks along the way. If it wasn’t for the immature over-played vomit comedy a couple of times (yes I said vomit comedy) this movie could be rated a 10. The cartoon like vomit scenes bring the quality of the movie down to the level of a Jackass movie. Fortunately the rest of the movie stays at a certain comic relief level above fart jokes and puking. Other than that, Glee fans will find this funny, witty and fun.

9/10

“…it’s just god punishing you cause you’re a ginger.”

A spy action thriller movie from the Jason Bourne series, but without Jason Bourne. We have a new character, another super spy from a secret study that they decided to make disappear. New guy, similar concept, I can’t even remember the character’s name the next day.

Legacy has a distinct low-budget B-movie feel to it. It’s often slow and tedious. And unfortunately our lead (Jeremy Renner) simply doesn’t have the star quality needed to pull this one off. You want to like this guy, but there is something missing from him being a big time action star. Voice isn’t deep enough, seems like a nice guy that is just overly angry at times. He has two looks in this film, stone faced or angry faced. He makes a great supporting actor, but doesn’t do it for me as the lead. Seeing him on Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago made me want to like this movie more, but it didn’t help.

The chronically helpless and totally dependant female lead becomes annoying as well. In this day and age, we don’t typically see the female lead as the endlessly traumatized victim that is constantly saved, she generally fights back some. But not here, she is completely helpless, and you just want to reach out and shake her. Grab a pair honey, and shoot the guy, it’s an action movie, you aren’t a rape victim in an 80’s TV movie.

The Bourne Legacy is okay, but there are better action movies out there to watch, even ones with seemingly lower budgets than this.

6/10

I totally recall the original movie starring big Arnold Schwarzenegger. And I totally forgot that Sharon Stone was in it, till I looked on IMDB to get the spelling of Schwarzenegger’s name. I have fond memories of the original Total Recall from 1990. It was an excellent movie at the time, great action, state of the art effects, a lot of fun to watch. Now it appears dated. And the modern theme in Sci-Fi is to make things look more realistic and dark like Blade Runner, and less clean and stylish like in 2001 A Space Odyssey.

This 2012 version takes the general plot of the original movie, and puts it into the world and scenery we are familiar with in Blade Runner. Add the flying car action scenes we found exciting in The Fifth Element. And finish with the robot design from, I Robot. So if you steal from those 4 outstanding movies, you end up with this. Nothing original here at all, just a great Sci-Fi action movie that is really well done. Well it’s not 100%, the last few minutes are a bit confusing and in return disappointing. Otherwise we’d have a 10.

9/10