ComplainerMan

Maybe it’s because my family a couple of generations back is from the general area where the movie True Grit is set, but I just couldn’t get past the dialog. It was OK for the first minutes of the movie when the narrator was apparently reading a letter she had written, describing the murder of her father. You don’t expect people to use contractions when writing letters. They do use them when they speak though. But not in this  movie.

My guess is that all these Civil War documentaries, where the narrative consists of the reading of historical correspondence, is supposed to be how people talked back in those days. The director possibly saw this a making the movie seem more authentic. This device apparently worked on the majority of viewers, because I didn’t see any mention of this horribly unnatural, awkward dialog in the reviews prior to my wasting a couple of hours on this movie.

Again, maybe it was because my grandpa, who was born and raised in Indian Territory, in the Choctaw Nation where this movie took place, didn’t sound like a person reading a letter, that I found the dialog of this movie unnatural and disturbing.  I just couldn’t get past how the roughest, toughest, uneducated, criminal hombres sound like they area reading a poorly written book instead of conversing.

Besides the horrible dialog, the movie is OK. Jeff Bridges is a great actor, and he can pull the character off without bringing too much notice too the crap is given to say. Matt Damon is ok too, but the little girl and the rest of the actors stink to high heaven. Not to say they are bad actors. They are just unable to rise above such a poor script as are extremely talented an accomplished actors.

The climax of the movie happens fast and unexpectedly, and is a bit of a disappointment. That might be because I was entertaining myself and annoying my wife by looking for slip-ups, when the actors actually used contractions. They are few and far between, but they’re there.

Now I have to watch the original “True Grit” starring John Wayne to cleanse my palate of this debacle. If you want to see how bad movie dialog can be, you may want to satisfy your morbid curiosity and watch an hour or so of this movie. Take it from me though, the ending isn’t worth watching the whole thing.

I’ll review the crap out of all of ‘em! Every last one of those grody little B-rated horror flicks! Most of them. One through four.  Which, now that I look at all the pathetic sequels, knock-offs, and crossovers, isn’t even most of them. Jeez. How many freakin’ movies can you make without realizing that they’re all lame? The answer, it would seem, is “A LOT.” So let’s get reviewing.

Friday the 13^th sets the standard for a whole lot of slasher movie clichés. They’ve got it all! Obligatory topless- even nude scenes, hanging, dismemberment, disembowelment, impalement, cutting people in half,  crushing skulls to make eyeballs pop out (in shitty 3D no less), and the most important rule of all… If you are a crappy horror movie chick who has had at least one partially or fully nude scene, you MUST leave the weapon you used to “kill” the killer next to his “dead” body. And to save him the trouble of picking it up, put it right next to his hand. Good show.

It’s so consistently bad that it falls into the unique category of so bad that it’s good. You watch it like a critic, you puke yourself and burn the VHS/DVD in public. You watch it like someone looking for a laugh, you have a grand old time then puke yourself laughing. … What? It’s a collection of B-movies! You’re gonna puke no matter who you are! These things are awful. Awfully good. Goodly awful!

And that’s the great part about these movies! You don’t need to be a huge famous actor/actress in order to get a part. You don’t even have to be good at acting. You just need to be able to act like an expendable horny stoner teenager, and who isn’t good at that, am I right? You just have a few beers before they start rolling, and bada-bing, you’re set to be a film star. Sorta.

Let’s go in-depth here and discuss some of the finer deaths in the Friday the 13^th series. Sure, Jason has a hardcore slash ‘em and stash ‘em habit, but he’s got his crowning moments of just too much. For example, in Friday the 13^th part II (maybe, it all blends together after the first twenty views), a guy doing a handstand for whatever reason gets cleaved in half! Whoa! Pretty sweet. Point being, Jason cut him down the middle, and he wound up horizontally chopped and stashed in a closet. Slash and stash!

Also amazing was the time Jason grabbed a hold of some guy’s head and squished it until his- well, to be completely accurate, he crushed a dummy head, and the eyeball was pushed out by a piston thing. It looked really fake, but it was in 3D so who gives two craps, right? Hilarious. Or how Jason harpooned a girl in the eyeball, and mysteriously the claylike skin around her eye seemed to wrap around the harpoon to hold it in place? Oh yeah. You don’t need good effects to be a badass. You’re Jason Voorhees, goddamnit.

While I would love to continue to reminisce about goodly bad movies long past, a little internet searching has informed me that there are a total of ten canon Friday the 13^th movies. In the tenth one, Jason is in space. He’s…. he’s in space. He’s literally up in a space ship, killing aliens with a high tech machete. What is with the space trend?! Hellraiser managed to get into space, so just what the hell is going-

Okay. Getting a little sidetracked. I’ll come clean with you, the popularity of these movies comes from the iconic character Jason Voorhees. You know, guy with the hockey mask, wears a jumpsuit, knows his way around the machete? If it weren’t for the fact that Jason was in the movies, and that he KEEPS. COMING. BACK, the series would have hit the ground hard and not have made it past number four.

I guess it goes to show that a little ugly chick boobage and a lot of grody, unrealistic looking horror scenes can make you filthy rich. Have fun puking richly while watching! Because oh, I know I did.

If you didn’t see the movie because the commercials looked way over-the-top and dumb, I don’t blame you. It’s really hard to find a good movie these days that doesn’t botch the commercial. Allow me to clarify the depth and purpose of the movie before those commercial instilled sentiments solidify.

Chronicle is about a high school senior named Andrew, his cousin Matt, and Matt’s friend Steve. It’s not so much about their fight to grow more powerful and conquer humanity as it is their struggle to keep their power in check while trying to control themselves. Before you can know why things happen the way they do, you’d need to know a fair bit about the characters.

Andrew is the only child of a drunken, abusive father and a deathly ill mother. His home life is horrible, and his school life is no better. Due to his withdrawn, timid nature, he’s the victim of hardcore bullying. Matt is his cousin, and he’s a down-to-earth blend of philosopher and bro, leaning towards the former. His character is set rigidly as the rational, stay-positive good guy, the control to Andrew’s chaos. Steve is less relevant to Andrew, as he is the soon-to-be-elected class president of his high school, setting him a peg above the rest in regards to popularity and respect.

Early on in the movie Andrew is barely willingly taken to a party by Matt in order to get out and meet people. Some bullying occurs in the party, so Andrew decides to spend his time outside. This is fortunate for him, in a way, because Steve finds him and leads him to a far-off underground micro-cavern. He and Matt wanted to get some footage of whatever was inside. They get it alright. At the end of the long, winding tunnel, a turquoise, glowing clump of crystals lay embedded in the stone wall. Steve goes ahead to touch it, and the camera dies.

From then on, the three begin to experiment with their newfound power, their telekinesis. Through steady practice, they learn how to move objects of all shape and mass, and even gain the ability to fly. As it was said in the movie, the power is like a muscle; elastic, and capable of growing stronger if trained. Matt sees it as an impractical but curious gimmick to be kept a secret. Steve sees it as a handy tool for everyday life and entertainment. Andrew, unfortunately, shifts into a darker chain of thought.

This is where the more psychological portion of the movie kicks in. Andrew has no guidance, no closest friend of mutual respect that can keep him from his path of destruction. Inevitably, his thoughts turn to vengeance. Vengeance on the people that have harmed and humiliated him all his life. One might think it sounds wasteful or poorly thought out, but what else is there for a guy with no friends and no loving family? His mother would have offered advice, but she died due to her drunken husband’s absence. He was far too busy snooping around, trying to uncover one conspiracy or another with Andrew. With no one there to administer her medication, she didn’t last the night. And guess who Andrew’s dad blamed it on? That was the final straw. The downward spiral began.

In retrospect, I couldn’t think of anything the movie could have improved on right-out. The plot was solid, the ending was melancholy yet positive, and the characters were consistently realistic. I suppose the special effects were a bit lacking in some places, particularly the talent show portion where Andrew tries to gain some popularity. The balls he was juggling looked cartoony, and the cards didn’t quite seem real. Don’t let that turn you away, though. The movie’s positives are stronger.

Closing notes: Don’t judge a movie based on its commercials. It’s true, Chronicle might not appeal to everyone due to its tone and characterization, but that’s what DVD rental is for. If you don’t want to gamble with the theatre, you can watch for free later on. I’d recommend seeing it in theatre, though. I liked it a lot. Happy viewing, guys ‘n’ gals.

Really, though. It’s so black and white. Either you like it or you hate it, which sort of makes sense considering the nature of the film. Personally, I like it, so I’ll be going from that angle for the most part. I won’t gush, I’ll touch all bases, for better or for worse. First of all, Matrix is a futuristic, philosophical statement about the nature of man and machine. That much is vague, but relatively certain. It is set in a world where the prime of humankind is trapped within a digital world known as (I wonder) the Matrix.

Humanity realized the dream of a sentient artificial intelligence. It grew strong, and powerful, thriving off of solar energy. As the course of causality would have it, humanity came to fear their creation, and began to develop weapons against it. The A.I. detected this threat and responded accordingly, forcing the humans to shroud the skies, cutting off the energy source of the machines. Again, as causality would have it, the machines found another power source. Bioelectricity, the source of which was human beings. Crap, right? But how would they harvest the energy from unwilling humans? Growing them without allowing consciousness would not permit the development required to produce the optimal energy.

The Matrix was born as a method of control. It was made to be a virtual world to allow the mind to develop without real experience, a world with programmed rules. Rules, rigid as they were, were meant to be broken. That’s where The One comes in. Thomas Anderson in his false life, Neo in the real world.  His purpose is to defy the system and lead humanity to freedom through a series of rule-defiant “miracles.”

Now you see, that’s where the overbearingly philosophical aspect comes into play. I mean, hell, Matrix could be an allegory for humanity’s dependence on machines, a plight against the development of A.I., a comparison between those with power and those without… There are a whole lot of ways to interpret the movie. Or, you can not look deep at all and just accept everything at face-value. In that case, it would be a robots and guns action movie with lots of special effects that lacks meaning. Hence, black and white.

That’s a fair amount of positive and neutral stuff, so I’ll focus on the negatives now, just to keep it fair. I think characterization is a good place to start, so let’s bash on Keanu Reeves a little bit. Thomas Anderson starts off as an everyday, cynical sort of guy with no real aspirations aside from meeting the enigma Morpheus. In the end, he is sought by Morpheus and recognized as Neo, his hacker alias. After Neo’s rescued from the Matrix, he begins a steady spiral into the stoic, combat philosopher badass. Fortunately, he spends most of the movie learning how to be a badass while screwing it up most of the time. Y’know, that’s actually not so negative.

To be fair, Matrix is good movie. They keep everything pretty on-the-level the first time around, but when come the sequels… Yeah. I loathe to admit, but I’ll have to side with the popular opinion to a fault. The first movie was fantastic, original, visually appealing, and the sequels were less satisfactory. I believe the other movies came off as less appealing because they dramatically altered the tone and feel of the series. What was once centralized within the Matrix, the digital prison, soon grew to focus more on the underground, high-grade steampunk city and all the robe-wearing inhabitants. It’s like trying to mix ancient history with far future. It just feels wrong. Everyone lives like a tribe, yet in a world where so many non-sentient machines are readily available? Eh.

That’s all I’ve got. Overall, it’s a good movie with great effects and a great message or three. It doesn’t get pretentious until the sequels, so you can feel free to like the first one without fear of being judged. Enjoy!

So is Koobus. So is Wikus’s boss. So is the boss of the Nigerian gang. Long story short, everyone in the movie is a dick aside from Christopher Johnson and his little alien kid, and nearly everyone is trying to kill Wikus. It’s not really hard to tell why, but they’re still put in a very negative light for attempting to do so.

Wikus works for the Multi National Union (MNU) and is assigned to evict aliens from their homes in a Johannesburg slum in order to relocate them to a “better” camp. The less intelligent worker aliens, or prawns, as they’re referred to, landed a mothership on Earth (South Africa specifically) around 28 years before the film takes place, and their emergence was far from glorious. The millions of prawns were malnourished and desperate, without any organizational ability whatsoever. Even in a makeshift town slum, their presence grew to be hated by many. Thus, they are to be moved far away from Johannesburg into a small concentration camp-esque setting. Wikus tries to do this. It doesn’t go so well.

Christopher Johnson and his son are attempting to gather enough of the alien liquid fuel in order to start the command module of their hidden ship up and return to the mothership, at which point, they would return home. Wikus searches Christopher Johnson’s house and find the liquid, and he is subsequently exposed to it. Over time, he starts to show serious signs of mutation, as if he is changing into one of the prawns. And guess what? He was.

As it turns out, MNU is also an alien weapons and genetics research organization, and that puts Wikus in their crosshairs. They take him underground and attempt to rip him apart for science, only for him to escape into District 9. The media and military hunt for Wikus then begins, forcing him to hide out in Christopher Johnson’s house. They collaborate and try to retake the alien liquid that was confiscated by Wikus himself by purchasing alien weaponry from the Nigerians and raiding the MNU. It goes extremely well, except when Koobus, the gun-crazy military guy who likes killing people and is in general a terrible person, gathers his soldiers and brings the fight to Wikus yet again.

Actually, you know what? Screw the linear plot description. This is pretty much all you really need. I’ll now talk about why Wikus is a dick:

• Reason 1: During the eviction operation, he has a lot of prawns killed.
• Reason 2: He threatens to take Christopher Johnson’s child if he doesn’t agree to the illegal eviction.
• Reason 3: He only helps Christopher Johnson because he can be turned human again if he gets the alien liquid.
• Reason 4: Prawns are used as medical experiments and Wikus is apathetic.
• Reason 5: Christopher Johnson tells him he has to wait three years to be cured, Wikus knocks him unconscious and leaves him to the MNU soldiers.
• Reason 6: When Wikus procures the incredibly powerful prawn battlesuit, he lets the MNU soldiers keep Christopher Johnson in exchange for his freedom, even though they still try to kill him.
• Reason 7: He makes all these horrible decisions in front of Christopher Johnson’s child.

It’s a good movie. See it, get mad at all the assholes, then get happy when they all die. Woo! Yeah! Revenge scenes! The special effects are fantastic too. Happy viewing!

You know what was a wonderfully bad movie? Westworld. I know there’s not much to be gained from bashing on the plot holes of old sci-fi movies, but I never really spoke up when I first began to notice just how much they had done wrong. I’ll assume that most readers haven’t seen Westworld before, and I would like to provide said readers with an opportunity to enjoy a movie that’ll have you saying, “Wait, what?” so many times your head will explode. And then robot cowboys will come out.

That’s what Westworld is all about, you see. It’s a movie about a theme park designed to “accurately” replicate the societies of medieval Europe, the Wild West, and ancient Rome… Only all of the actors in the theme park are high-function robots! And it only costs one thousands dollars a day to stay. I’ll point out all the horrific fallacies in a moment, after I discuss the plot.

The two protagonists (whose names escape me) begin their journey to Westworld by taking a hovercar as scientists in front of beeping monitors and flashing lights call out random numbers. Are you impressed? Dazzled? Hah, of course you are. They’re doing science. After they get settled in, they discover that the hands of the robots look funny, which is how you tell them apart from humans. Got that? That’s important. They meet an unfriendly cowboy robot who really doesn’t like them, which is also equally important, seeing as he stalks them after they “kill” him in a duel the first time around.

Here’s where the plot holes start up. The scientists are walking around, talking all science-y, when somebody says, “These are robots built by robots. We don’t know how they work.” So let’s use them as theme park attractions! They even say in the advert for the movie, “Nothing can go worng.” How did that typo slip past editorial? … Uh oh.

As you may have guessed, everything goes wrong as this point. I mean EVERYTHING. Even the script-writing. Even the acting! Everything goes worng. The robots begin to attack and kill guests, so the scientists shut down the park’s power, and for some reason, the operation room is airtight. Their electrically opened doors are sealed shut for some reason, and they all end up dying of asphyxiation. Science made that room. Also, remember the stalker robot mentioned earlier? Now that he’s gone berserk, he can actually kill people. Which he does. A lot. In fact, he kills one of the two main protagonists, the one without the moustache. It’s no spoiler. The movie spoiled itself when the survivor meets a scientist who’s attempting to drive away from the park, and they have a small exchange of words, which reveals another plot hole. Science-man says that the robot that’s chasing moustache is the latest model, equipped with long-range tracking capabilities, extended battery life, thermal vision, and extreme firearm accuracy. Why would he need that if he’s not supposed to kill guests…? Science is the answer.

Anyways, the main guy finds a random vial of acid and throws it at the robot, which burns his normal vision and sets it to thermal. Moustache is chased for a bit before he lights evil cowboy robot on fire and saves the day, not before he tries to rescue a lovely damsel trapped in the Medieval World dungeon. He tries to give her a drink, but it turns out she’s a robot, so her head explodes. Gosh darn it.

So, to sum things up, Westworld is an old-fashioned movie that mixes science with the wild west and leaves no plot holes, logical fallacies, deus ex machina, anything of that sort to be criticized! It’s literally the best movie ever. Go watch it and enjoy the warm, fuzzy feeling it brings you as you realize just how full of crap most of this last paragraph is.

First I’ll pose the question: Have you heard of Twilight? I’ll assume yes. Twilight’s pretty big. Think about that, though. What does Twilight have? It’s a love story with vampires and werewolves thrown in as fetish fuel. Which is… kinda gross, I suppose. Blood and fur don’t exactly do it for me. Shaun of the Dead, on the other hand, is a movie about a couple (focusing on the guy) having relationship troubles with zombies thrown in just for shits and giggles. The zombie part of the plot actually forces itself into the movie somewhere past the halfway mark. Shaun and Ed have a tough enough time noticing the undead wandering around and eating people due to their collective lackadaisical nature.

Shaun likes Liz, but Liz wants to get out and do things in the world, not just spend every day in the Winchester Tavern drinking her life away. Shaun wouldn’t mind that, and his flatmate Ed sure wouldn’t mind it. After some counseling with her flatmates Diane and David (and a rather typical comical incident where Shaun is meant to book a table at a classy restaurant and forgets), Liz splits, leaving him to his Winchestering.

They don’t really figure out that there are zombies in London until Ed finds an incredibly “drunk” girl in their backyard, and she stands up after being impaled by a pole. Okay, so there’s something going around that’s spread through bites. Can’t be zombies, though. That would be ridiculous. Absurd! Never say the zed word. Just call them “those.” That said, Shaun and Ed decide it would be a good idea to go get Shaun’s mom and girlfriend and bring them round the Winchester to lock down and keep safe until the whole thing blows over. Shaun’s unpleasant stepdad comes along too. So do a bunch of “those.” Hilarity ensues. So does horrible bloodshed.

What really makes Shaun of the Dead funny is how the characters seem hell-bent on forgetting the fact that they’re enduring a zombie apocalypse. Their capacity for distraction is limitless. Shaun keeps trying to get Liz back, Liz is still struggling with whether or not she wants to take Shaun back, Ed keeps doing his own thing and attracting zombies in one way or another, David won’t stop complaining, Diane hardly seems to care, and Shaun’s mom doesn’t seem to have any idea there’re zombies around. The only one who seems to actually know what she’s doing is Shaun’s old friend Yvonne, and she only shows up three very brief times in the movie. Who cares about actually trying to survive, right?

That’s also what makes you want to go back and watch it again. Resident Evil has mutant zombies and evil organizations, Dawn of the Dead has gun-toting realistic survivors, 28 Days Later had the RAGE inflicted quasi-zombies… It’s all so dark and morbid. Sometimes, you just want to look at the possibility of a zombie apocalypse and say, “Gee, I sure wish there was a hilarious British parody of this whole zombie craze.” I’ve got some good news for you. There is: Shaun of the Dead. Any zombie freak would like it. I did. Go buy it and watch it and have yourself a good-natured chuckle.

It’s not that I’m so modern that I can’t help but to make fun of the effects in older movies. It’s not that I like negatively reviewing the first movie in a series that kicks everything off into. I just really like bad horror movies. And that’s not even a negative comment! Bad horror movies are practically their own genre. It’s like, every time you’ve seen a grody, nasty movie with nudity and viscera yet never seem to feel sick or spooked, that’s a bad horror movie. It’s fun to watch, but not when you’re looking for legitimate thrills. It’s just for the laughs, just for the comical extremes.

That’s honestly what I see the first Hellraiser as. No offense, Clive Barker, I love the Hellraiser series with all my heart, and your other movies too. I even bought your video game, Jericho, and that thing was awesome. It’s just that Hellraiser was one of those bad horror movies.

First thing you need to know about Hellraiser is what the golden puzzlebox is, who the blue nailface guy is, and what he does for a living. The box is called the Lament Configuration, and it is used to open up a dimensional door to Hell. Whoever opens the box is then hunted by sadistic demons known as Cenobites, led by a particularly fearful creature by the name of Pinhead, hence the nails. I still can’t tell whether that’s his real name or a fan name, so I’ll leave it to the reader to decide. Heh. Pinhead. Anyways, the Cenobites have two primary weapons against those who open the dreaded box: They will either “playfully” chase you, hurting you more and more with each encounter until they finally decide to finish the process and tear your body to shreds. Or, they’ll torment you psychologically, invading your mind and causing you to experience suffering worthy only of the damned. And when you kill yourself to get away from it, you have to relive it. Again, and again, and again. Or they’ll do both. Whatever’s more appropriate.

Pretty sweet.

So anyways, Hellraiser the First is about Frank. Frank opens the box and gets shredded in an attic. The husband of the woman who originally hooked up with Frank bleeds in the attic for some reason, spurring Frank to emerge from death in a glorious show of goopy brainy resurrection effects, which were awesome, I gotta say. He forces the lass he was with before to lure guys up into the attic and kill them so he can patch his body back together.

Shit gets real when the daughter of… I forget his name, the husband of the lady who hooked up with Frank. Yeah, her. She winds up stealing the box and opening it, and when the Cenobites come, she makes a deal with them. She would trade Frank for her life. The Cenobites have no intention of sparing her, but the though of someone escaping their net of pain is insulting. So they let her lead them to Frank.

HOWEVER.

Before this can happen, however, Kirsty (that’s her name) is chased by an awkward hallway monster with a tram stuck in its ass. You can see the tram quite clearly. I was amused by this; I laughed and laughed. Mister wallmonster was so cute. But yeah, Frank ends up killing Kirsty’s daddy and wearing his skin, and when he fails to kill Kirsty, he kills his servant babe instead. Uh oh. Then the Cenobites put a bunch of hooks in him and he explodes. They try to go for Kirsty, but she uses the box to zeep them all back to Hell. For a little while.

There’s a lot more to it, really. I just prefer to keep most of it a secret in the review, that way you can really enjoy the chuckle you’ll get out of Hellraiser to the fullest extent. “We have such sights to show you…” Then spiked hooky chains fly out of my face and rip you to little pieces. Have fun!

You read the title, didn’t you? Inception was a good movie, and Sucker Punch is better. So why are you not seeing Sucker Punch right now? Wait, what do you mean opinions aren’t facts and need to be backed up with solid arguments? Crap. Fine. I’ll make this review longer than one paragraph. Lousy opinionated masses…

Right! First thing that makes the movie fantastic: Emily Browing! … What, you don’t remember who she is? Oh, please. She was Violet in the crappy Series of Unfortunate Events movie. She was the crazy sister in The Uninvited! And she’s damned cute. You can’t tell me that’s not enough to make you see the movie! … Content quality? Are you serious?! Fine! Fine. Why don’t I paint your house while I’m at it.

Sucker Punch is better than Inception because the dreams in Inception are all like James Bond movies. Completely realistic to a fault and loaded with guns and people that get shot. Yes, they talk about dreams, and dreams are involved, but these dreams reflect nothing of the subconscious! Except for guns and dying and a stalker projection. There. Now that Inception has been cast in a bad light- Oh, you want content from Sucker Punch. I guess that’s only reasonable. Workin’ my fingers to the bone…

Sucker Punch is about a little platinum blonde Babydoll whose stepfather lusts after her and her sister’s inheritance. Has nothing to do with The Series of Unfortunate Events movie, and is in no way similar. At all. He kills their mother, and when he finds out that the wealth goes to her daughters, he tries to kill them too in a drunken rage. He gets the younger sister, then frames Babydoll for it and sends her to an asylum, paying off one of the orderlies to forge a signature permitting a lobotomy. Babydoll has three days to escape. Will she make it? Let’s dive another layer down.

Sucker Punch is about a little platinum blonde Babydoll orphan who is delivered to a strip club by a priest that looks just like her stepdad in the upper layer. Weird, huh? She has to learn how to dance her stripperiffic dance in order to impress her clients, yet at the same time plot to escape the horrible and corrupt house of tail, and more importantly, the High Roller (who looks oddly like the lobotomist). Will she make it? Let’s dive yet another layer down.

Sucker Punch is about a platinum blonde warrior Babydoll who is watched over by a nameless Wise Man, from whom she receives a katana and a handgun. With these symbolic weapons, she must cleave and gun down all manner of icon-foes, some of which look oddly like her stepdad and the strip club owner. What a world. The various objectives she must complete seem impossible, but with the crew of girls she has backing her, their efforts will guarantee victory/escape/escape!

So which fricken’ story is the real one? Who can tell? That’s the draw. All of these perceived realities are connected yet disconnected from one another, making for one hell of an interesting movie. Yes, it may seem a little bit focused on the whole girls in skimpy outfits kicking major ass with guns and swords, but… They’re so sincere when they go about doing it! Best way to describe it. Sincere. It fits the tone of the movie.

Let’s close with shortcomings so you can end on a good note. Does that make sense? Does this movie make sense? Those are rhetorical questions. Sucker Punch offers a lot as a movie with spunk and mind screws. It offers some likeable if not somewhat flat characters whose shortcomings are made up for with seriously amazing special effects. Because who needs plot these days? Okay, so Inception had a better plot. But you know what’s really great? Emily Browining. For the record, this review makes as much sense as Sucker Punch does, so feel free to compare this review to the movie when you’re watching it. Because you should. And you will. Emily Browning.

Yeah, you know where this is going. After all, there’s only two ways to go when reviewing this freakin’ movie. I’ll either say, “Gee whiz, that movie sure looked good! I mean, the plot was really simple, but look at all the work they put into the special effects!” or I’ll say, “Avatar was a colossal waste of time, just like Tron. All smoke and mirrors with no substance. What it lacks in originality it makes up for in a plight for gratuitous visual appeal.” It’s a harrowing road, so I’ll do it from both angles! Hey alright. Let’s get this party started.

First of all… yeah, it is Pocahontas. Jake Sully is John Smith, Neytiri is Pocahontas, and the people of the Resources Development Administration are the evil Brits who are looking for Unobtanium/gold. The hero comes in ignorant and foolhardy, then he comes to learn just what an amazing world the tribal people live in, and he meets a girl. A whole new world~ But oh no, it turns out the people the main hero was rolling with want to destroy the tribal people for material gain! The bad guys start to win, then the main hero calls upon the strength of the forest, which comes to life and keeps itself from industrialization. Deus ex machina, more or less. And that’s uh… that’s the plot. All of it. Yup.

But hey, they have like a million “whole new world~” montages where Jake Sully learns of the beauty of the planet Pandora, and the ways of the Na’vi people, the spirituality of life, and then you start to puke rainbows. Appeal to pathos and a statement of anti-xenophobia? You bet your butt! The method’s a little half-assed, considering the movie blatantly states that humans are greedy, merciless assholes that’ll do anything to get what they want while killing anyone who gets in their way.

At this point, I’m really struggling to come up with non-filler for this Avatar review. I suppose I could talk about how good the visuals look… I said I’d approach from both angles, so I might as well. The creatures on Pandora are exotic and colorful, the technology the RDA uses is badass industrial, the Na’vi themselves look interesting enough with their little pink noses and their hair-tentacle things. Just about everything looks great except for the teeth. I mean, seriously, when Sigourney Weaver’s avatar smiles, you look at the teeth and go, “What. Alien planet, alien body, and a bleach-white Hollywood grin? That’s depressing.”

Hold the phone! I’ve just stumbled upon a conspiracy theory. If all the Na’vi and the avatars have bright white 1-800-DENTIST smiles, then maybe they’re secretly a part of the RDA’s plot. Maybe they’ve fallen for the flying holographic adverts the RDA flew around Pandora. Think about it: Do you ever see Na’vi cleaning their teeth? Do you? No! Then why are their teeth so bright freaking white? They don’t even look real.

Oh, wait. Maybe the 3D team just didn’t really think that one through. I mean, that is a really difficult thing to deal with in movies. Y’know, proper hygienics. You want your characters to look good, even if they don’t primp themselves to the extent that would justify their in-movie beauty.

Anyway.

That’s about all I’ve got. I covered the absolute basics then talked about teeth. Hell, it’s a simple movie. I wouldn’t recommend seeing it, honestly. It looks good, I guess. You might get a kick out of it if you’re easily dazzled by speshul FX.