myjerkygameaddy's Reviews

Girl Lost (2016)

3/10

Obvious exploitation film with a thin veneer of morality

22 May 2018

Warning: Spoilers

I found this film described as a socially conscious, real life depiction of at risk youth in the U.S. An important film that people should see. Raising awareness to underage sex trafficking etc etc... I fully agree that it's a cause for concern. But this film? It's not about these things.

Every character in this story is a sexual predator, a junkie, a sexual predator junkie, a victim, a pimp, or a generally unreasonable person. There was one guy who was just a brothel thug. He murders people, but is still a moderate compared to the shitty Mom, her rape'y friends, the emotional parasite boyfriend, the pimps, the non-stop horde of psycho johns... It's just non-stop phobic stimulus. A realistic depiction in a "worst case scenario for everybody all of the time" sort of way. There's nothing for the viewer to really invest themselves in. You know that this thing is going to end with dead people and a lot of crying.

I'm also seeing an obnoxious amount of fake reviews on this page. It's tacky misrepresentation and a major contributor to the lousy score I'm submitting.

+1 star because I can't start at "zero" +1 star for marketing well enough to actually reach me. +1 star for being awful enough to elicit this review.

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Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

1/10

"Kingsman: The Golden Shower"

30 November 2017

Warning: Spoilers

This is what I call it... "The Golden Shower" I feel like anyone who actually pays money to watch this dumpster fire of a movie is volunteering to been urinated upon by Hollywood. It really is awful. How so?

1. Most of the set pieces, and action scenes in this movie rely almost exclusively on dated looking CG/green screen effects. This isn't 2005. Nobody wants to wants to see actors jumping up and down in front of imaginary opponents. It's dated, and it's cheap. This movie cost over 100 million dollars, and they give us these tired old tricks.

2. There are enough A-list actors in this movie to make 3 completely different movies, but most of them are inconsequential are far as the plot is concerned. Some of them barely have speaking parts. What happened here? I want to understand. Why would you put Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Halle Berry and Pedro Pascal in a movie, and then just not give them anything to do?

3. SPOILER! The mental gymnastics that this movie goes through just to set up a conflict is so convoluted, it's almost impressive. They resurrect a major villain from the last movie so he can become a minor villain in this movie...then he helps kill off almost all of the minor heroes from the last movie so they can make way for a whole new cast of minor heroes in this movie, who've apparently resurrected one of the main heroes who got killed off in the last movie. He got shot in the face point blank, and was dead for at least 20 minutes...but they had the miracle healing goo that they put on his face...so everything is...ughhh *pained expression* Seriously. What the hell is going on with this piece of s**t?

4. The humour is just bad. I don't know how else to explain it succinctly. They tried to do "campy" but they got "tacky" instead. I detected a bit of tongue-in-cheek criticism of U.S drug prohibition, which I can usually appreciate. Although somewhat predictable, this subtext COULD have been relevant. However, after about 30 minutes of viewing, expecting any audience to reflect thoughtfully about major legal, social issues is a bit of a stretch.

I think I'm actually dumber for having watched this abomination. Unless you're interested in learning how to not make a movie, I couldn't recommend it.

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Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

10/10

Classic, unpretentious, light hearted fun.

10 August 2010

I don't care what the naysayers think. I love this movie. I loved it when I was 6 years old and I love it now.

Prepare to to be transported back in time to when not every film took itself so damned seriously. There's good guys, bad guys, minimal plot, cheesy dialogue and tons of good ol' kick, punch, gouge, slash and stab action!

The acting in this show is what the modern movie crowd would call "camp" But, I just like to call it "acting" By that I mean the fun kind. No politically correct cultural pandering, and none of this "twisted, misunderstood anti-hero" nonsense. It's all wonderfully stereotypical chop socky goodness. Victor Wong and James Hong are both, IMHO, action movie legends and make this film a winner between just the two of them. Their respective characters, although mostly static, are instantly endearing and hilarious to watch. They pull it off with comedic talent alone. Kurt Russel, Dennis Dun and Kim Cattrall work well together and all give entertaining, memorable performances within their respective archetypes (Reluctant hero, sidekick, damsel in distress)

The story itself? Well, just watch the movie. You'll pick it all up as it goes. It starts quickly and gets to the good parts without wasting your time with meaningless dialogue, side plots or back story. No hidden agendas, no bait-and-switch, no underlying social metaphors. It's just a story. A story where everybody gets beat up....a lot

The special effects were....just that...effects. Nothing more. Crude by today's standards (obviously) but unlike 99.98% of contemporary action flicks, they weren't expected to support the entire show! They were "special effects" As in...not the entire budget! Wow! Even if you don't get a kick out of it, you can keep watching because there's an actual movie happening amidst it all! What a concept, huh?! The fights are all live action, with live extras who come in screaming, shooting and flailing like they really mean it. The hits come often and they don't stop until the the show ends.

You will also notice a surprising lack of gore, profanity and overt sexuality/nudity. A few cuts and scrapes, a couple rubber corpses here and there. A few cheap scares. Kurt Russell says "shit" a couple times. But, that's it. By today's standards, this show is almost family friendly and has the added bonus of not totally sucking.

This movie is a rare gem compared to the endless list of ill conceived, overwrought, CG driven garbage that clutters up our screens. Check it out, and try not to take it so damned seriously.

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Terminator Salvation (2009)

1/10

Disgraceful

23 May 2009

Warning: Spoilers

WARNING! I will ruin this movie for you

I've seen all of the Terminator movies (all in their respective days) have read most of the comic book adaptions and have snored my way through the recent T.V series. And yes. Some incarnations were obviously better than others (to me) But, this turd of a film could not be further from the mark. And when I actually bothered to look up "McG"s body of work I can't say that I'm surprised. Gap commercials, music videos, Charlie's Angels... At what point did the financiers of this movie say "wow, we have to get this guy to direct the movie" But, I can't put all of the blame on one person. The entire creative staff has obviously gone to the Michael Bay school of film making...and failed. I only have 1000 word to work with...sooo...I shall list my gripes in point form.

1. Within 10 minutes of the title shot, this movie fired off one of THE BIGGEST Clichés IN WESTERN FILM. "It's too quiet in here (dramatic pause) It's like they're waiting for us" Seriously now! Is this the best writing that Hollywood can come up with? If this was an attempt at humour...it failed...just like the rest of this movie.

2. Giant Robots!!! Loud noises!!! Almost all of the battle sequences in this movie played out like a stylized ripoff of Transformers. There were big walking robots, big robot sound effects, big robot guns and aircraft, big robots riding the robot aircraft, motorcycle robots... They even had little stabby robots that swam around in the water. And they all looked like something out of a cheesy mecha flick. All glossy and pointy looking. These are not the cold, machined gun metal designs that set this series apart from all the others.

3. Chase scenes...chase scenes....followed by more chase scenes. #&#$ off with this already! How much time did these people fill with these blown out, CG'ed chase scenes? Foot chases, car chases and even air chases. "How do we transition from our crappy battle scene to our feeble attempt at character development?" Oh! I know!" Yep...you guessed it...

4. Even more clichés... Yep...Just about all of them. I'll have to make sub-points for this.

The irrelevant love interest cliché.

The conflicted double agent cliché.

The antagonist's fatal flaw cliché. "Let's just leave all of our nuclear power cells laying on a big table. They'll be OK"

The incompetent villain cliché. No, a hydraulically powered mechanical assassin would not simply shoot/crush/eviscerate it's victims. But, would merely toss them around, fire it's weapons erratically and then stand underneath precariously placed heavy objects, blast furnaces etc...

The (pathetically mangled) hero's sacrifice cliché. "Oh no! John Connor has been impaled through the chest with a ragged piece of metal! And, his heart is just about to fail! Here, take my perfectly good cyborg heart...that has just been crushed repeatedly with a giant metal casting....and then nearly punched out of my chest by another cyborg"

Need I go on?

This movie is big budget Hollywood hackery at it's best. And I still can't believe that it made it off of the script. I hope that the persons responsible for this mockery are ripped apart by wild dogs.

Thank you and good day

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Impact (2009)

1/10

A masterpiece of crap

19 April 2009

Warning: Spoilers

REALLY BIG SPOILER WARNING!

First off, I didn't think much of "Armageddon" in the first place. At best, it was a 5/10 star movie if only because of the CG effects (of it's day) This show gets 1 star because:

A: Duh... It's a two bit knockoff

It rips off the entire premise of Armageddon. Planet killing space object, planetary disasters, nuclear weapons, last ditch expedition, heroic sacrifice...blah blah blah. It's basically cut and pasted from the original script.

B: Super sized storyline clichés...

Hmmm...OK. So, the guy from JAG is a recently widowed astronomer with two oh so adorable kids. And, the chick from Species is a single, frumped up but still strikingly attractive astronomer whom the JAG guy went to school with... I wonder what's going to happen with these two? (yawn)

And, let's not forget the obsessive, slightly creepy yet brilliant scientist guy who finds out that his neglected wife is (gasp) pregnant! Oh no! I hope that he doesn't die, later! And, who can forget the tried and true "let's launch a nuclear arsenal at the problem" approach. Because, this has always worked so well in previous movies.

C: The obligatory presidential address.

Yeah...sure...unite the world in the face of the impending doom...we are one people...love thy neighbour...blah blah blah. I'm so sure that the entire world wouldn't already be too busy running amok in a violent, drug fueled, sexually ambiguous frenzy to notice.

D: Science? What's that?

Don't even get me started about the scientific fallacies in this movie. I would have thought that the writers would have at least done a wikipedia search before filling a script with such nonsense.

Conclusion:

I wouldn't feel bad about downloading this movie on a P2P/bit torrent network. It's already pirated and repackaged. Who cares?

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The Happening (2008)

2/10

The Crappening.

14 October 2008

Warning: Spoilers

This movie lost eight of my stars in a hurry. And, here's why...

1 Casting

Ohhh kay...We have Mark Wahlberg and John Lequizamo. Two decent, "middle of the road" actors. But, both are almost completely impossible for me to take seriously. So, any attempt to build suspense is horribly marred.

2. The expendable friend cliché.

This one is worth two stars. I hate this cliché more than most. And, this movie is a textbook example of it. You'd have to not be paying attention at all (which is highly plausible in this case) to not know that John Lequizamo was dead meat at the very minute that his wife didn't show up for the train. But, it was pretty much spelled out on the screen when he suddenly abandons his kid (good move, btw) to climb into a jeep full of extras in order to find his (obviously dead) wife. I'm tired of this, "you go on, I'll just gonna go do something and catch up with you, later" crap. We all know where it leads...

3. Poorly written dialog

Horrible. Lequizamo is ridiculous as the "fretful parent/husband" And, the whole "odd couple" thing between Mahlberg and Zooey Deschannel (who actually is somewhat talented) fails miserably on every level. And, since that these three were the only ones with any real lines, this is all that you see throughout the entire show.

4. Lack of character Development

None at all, actually. Static all the way. People...running...

5. What plot?

Ummm...yeah. The plants have become completely toxic, and are releasing airborne substances which make people kill themselves in grizzly, and sometimes elaborate ways. And? Yep, that as far as that device goes. The plants, the insanity, the death. No development there, either. And, I won't even get into this movie's total ignorance to plant biology. It just isn't plausible. Even in a disaster movie

6. Cop out ending

Yes, just like Mark Wahlberg said at the the beginning. "An act of nature that we don't understand" Or, something like that. That's great! Because, when I watch movies about mysterious, yet socially relevant ecological disasters, I like to leave with absolutely no closure, whatsoever! This is worth another two stars Bite me, Shyalaman!

Otherwise, this movie had an interesting concept for a "natural disaster\end of civilization" sort of story. And, I really was interested to see what was actually killing people off. But, I guess that I'll never know.

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