Jason Michaels

jeffrubinjeffrubin:

I had a little extra time and no new TV the past few weeks, so I’ve been catching up on movies. Here (I think) is everything I’ve seen. There’s some doozies.

Ghost Rider - I don’t get the devil. If he’s just going to trick Johnny Blaze into signing away his soul, why put up the whole pretense of a contract? Nicholas Cage is fun (I’d say he’s doing about 8/10 on the Cage-ometer) but he’s replaced by a CGI flaming skull for most of the third act. Peter Fonda as the devil probably sounded like more fun on paper than it actually is.

Angels & Demons - (spoiler alert!) Can a movie where the pope flies up in a helicopter, safely detonates an anti-matter bomb, and parachutes back down to the Vatican be all bad? Apparently, yes.

Terminator: Salvation - The only scene I liked was when Christian-Bale-John-Connor distracted some terminators with “You Could Be Mine,” a Guns N’ Roses single that Eddie-Furlong-John-Connor was listening to on his walkman back in T2. Just like everyone, John’s favorite music is still whatever he liked when he was a teenager. I suppose he probably doesn’t have much new music to listen to since Skynet wiped out most of humanity, but still.

Monsters vs Aliens - This might have been fun in 3D, but I found it really dull when watching it at home in two boring dimensions. I knew I was in trouble when it opened with a paddleball being bounced at the camera. Yes, I’m aware that I’m watching a movie for kids, but I loved…

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - Biggest movie surprise of 2009. I was extremely skeptical but heard lots of good things and decided to check it out. Very genuinely funny, I don’t think I know anyone who wouldn’t enjoy it. Here’s a movie that was probably fun in 3D, but still works at home.

Punisher: War Zone - Two great scenes, lots of bad ones. And I’m the only person I ever met who loved the Thomas Jane/John Travolta version of the Punisher.

The Hurt Locker - The director of Point Break makes her second best movie!

Avatar - 100% loved every part about it.

Sherlock Holmes - All I could think was “I’d rather be seeing Avatar a second time right now.” I also really wanted someone to say “No shit, Sherlock” but it never came up.

Taken - Really fun, hits all the right notes.

Rambo (the new one) - Julie Benz (who plays Rita on Dexter) was in both this and Punisher: War Zone. Someone should put her in better movies.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - You’ll probably find this somewhere between okay and very good, depending on your taste for Terry Gilliam. I thought it was very good. Tom Waits as the devil is exactly as much fun as it sounds.

Battlefield: Earth - As bad as the hype, and possibly worse. It’s as if there’s a wall around the movie preventing you from paying attention. Pat commented, “Is it still propaganda if I have no idea what they’re talking about?” I pride myself on loving bad movies (I don’t like the Travolta version of Punisher, I love it) but couldn’t make it through more than 20 minutes of this so we turned on…

Surrogates - Not bad, but keep in mind I watched it immediately after Battlefield: Earth.

Valkyre - Great, but keep in mind I watched it immediately after Surrogates.

Zodiac - I had always been interested in this movie but never got around to it, probably because of the 3 hour running time. When I saw it a bunch of those “Best of Decade” lists I decided to finally check it out, and I’m glad I did.

Gamer - Terrible, though it forms a neat ‘one-word-titles about remotely-controlled-bodies’ trilogy with Surrogates and Avatar.

Turtles Forever - Well, I watched it. This probably warrants it’s own post, but at one point Shredder stands at the nexus of the Turtle-verse and sees all the different versions of the Turtles (animated, live action, videogames, anime, comic books, comic strips) and says that if he destroys the original version of the Turtles, he will destroy the world that created them. This may be the only movie I’ve ever seen where the villain directly threatened the life of me, the viewer.

A Perfect Getaway - This movie is the kind of good people usually describe as “not bad at all.”

Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince - I’d love to show this movie to someone who has never even heard of Harry Potter. You are dropped into the middle of things with no exposition, bad things happen to good people for two-and-a-half hours, and then it ends.

I had to reblog just to say that I also loved the “original” punisher movie.