Planet Terror

Planet Terror

Today I watched an excellent movie “Planet Terror“.   It’s packed with action, zombies, quotes, comedy, and romance.  It has lots of special effects, great photography, and music.  If you ever watched more than three zombie movies which were released in late 1980s or early 1990s, you’ll love this film.

It is Robert Rodriguez’ re-incarnation of “Army of Darkness” in the perspective of bio-chemical accident with military personell involvement and a taste of Desperado.  That’s the best description I can come up with.  But really, you should better see this one.

7 out of 10.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Borat

I think that Sacha Baron Cohen is one of the most talented people in today’s comedy.  I’ve seen and appreciated much of his work.  If you aren’t too familiar with it, among other things, he is mostly famous for creating three characters which appear on a number of shows and television programs – Borat, Ali G, and  Bruno.  Each one of those characters is very different from the others, and all three are very different from Sacha Baron Cohen himself.   My favorite one is Ali G, which I mentioned a few times on this blog.  Other ones are funny too, but they don’t get me laughing as hard as Ali G.

One of these characters was taken as far as a full featured movie – “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan“.  I was trying a bit to avoid watching this film, because, although as funny as the character is, I thought it would be a bit too much.  After listening to a few friends of mine, who strongly recommended the movie (and referred and quoted it way too often), I decided to finally rent and watch it.

I’m glad I did.  It was indeed much more than I expected out of it.  Borat is a character who does a lot of exploration in cultural differences and stereotypes.  In this movie there was as much space for those explorations as one could get.  And he utilized it all.  It was unbelievable at times.  Sometimes Borat goes so far that it is impossible to believe that scenes weren’t done in the studio with hired actors.  After reading a bit about the movie after watching it, and after seeing a few interviews at YouTube, it seems that those scenes indeed took place as part of Borat’s life and not as staged movie scenes.  All I can say for that is – WOW!

I strongly recommend this film, if you aren’t easily upset by all sorts of humor (including toilet jokes, discrimination, sexual themes, slavery and human rights, etc).

Strong 7 out of 10 with extra points for bravery and hard work and sensitive areas.

Doomsday

Doomsday

With all the movies coming out of the Hollywood these days, one needs some set of mental filters (aka stereotypes) to pick good films and avoid all the rest.  But, as with any other area of human life, stereotypes can heal and harm.  According to the set of movie stereotypes in my head, I was totally going to avoid the movie “Doomsday“.  I’ve heard that it was about some virus outbreak, sealed contaminated area, and a bunch of people going in to find the cure.  That’s all I knew, and that sounded a lot like something along the lines of “28 Days Later“, “Resident Evil“, and many other movies.  Those movies, they aren’t bad, but I’ve seen enough of them.

Luckily, my friend and colleague Igor likes this type of movies a lot.  So he managed to persuade me to go and see “Doomsday”.  And I’m glad he did.

The story of the film was very much like I expected it.  But, we weren’t there for the story, were we?  It’s how one tells the story.  And in this type of films, it’s all about how you show infected people, their mutations, human flash, body parts, horror, black humor, and the rest of the visual effects.  “Doomsday” was pretty good in this regard.  I’d say it was a little bit more bloodier than it needed, but no serious complains in this department.

All that is not very important however.  Because “Doomsday” has something that so many other movies don’t.  It has the spirit.  The atmosphere, if you will.  And it suits it very well.  It is a very rock-n-roll movie.  So much rock-n-roll, that it is much closer to punk rock in its spirit (and literary, most of the characters appear to be some serious fans of punk rock music).

Doomsday scream

There are a few places in the movie, which are either boring or a little bit too far fetched, but, gladly, they are very few and very short.  In most of it, the film provides excellent entertainment and positive energy boost.  It is mostly funny, and hilarious at places.  It has excellent special effects and strong characters in it.  There are a few memorable quotes, including some very peculiar ways of using an F* word (the film is very British in its nature).

So, if you like uncensored punk rock with lots of fun, if you are not easily destabilized by motion pictures, if you don’t truly belief that people in the movie suffer in pain or die in pieces, if you welcome the creativity of the creator even if it is a little bit out of your bounds sometimes, if you enjoyed “Mad Max” trilogy and darker (non-romantic) side of “Waterworld” than I strongly recommend to watch this movie.  You won’t regret it.

7 out of 10.

Mr. Brooks

Mr. Brooks

A random pick off the shelf this time – “Mr. Brooks“.  Once again, I’ve been proven to miss lots and lots of nice movies that were released in the last two or three years.  Gladly, I am catching up.

This film features some of those actors, who I know very well, appreciate, but will try to avoid.  I don’t know why I am not a bigger fan of either Kevin Costner or Demi Moore.  They are both very talented and all, but somehow I find myself trying to skip a movie if it has one of them in it.

Since I took a random movie of the shelf, I wasn’t checking the cast or the pictures at all.  I have to say that I should do it more often, since I tend to end up with better movies than those that I pick after careful consideration.

Acting, story, and photography are the strong sides of this film.  7 out of 10 (or 7.5 if you like fractions)

I Think I Love My Wife

I Think I Love My Wife

I was in the mood for some comedy, so I rented “I Think I Love My Wife“.  I knew that with Chris Rock on the cover of the DVD, I had at least a few laughs guaranteed.  I wasn’t wrong.

The thing with Chris Rock is that he is a stand-up comedian.  He writes comedy and then he talks it back to the audience from the stage.  And he is good at that (check YouTube videos for some samples, there are quite a few).   His comedy is usually about much debated topics – politics, racism, gun control, parenting, and stuff like that.

He is a pretty smart guy.  But he is not an actor.  Neither he is a director.  Even though, the titles of this movie will tell otherwise.  Chris Rock is a comedian – that’s what he does.  So this film, like many others that he took part in, is like a continuation of the stage from which he reads his comedy.  Maybe it’s a little bit more visual, with some more people on it, but it’s still just a stage for Rock’s comedy.  Not that I find anything bad in it anyway.

I like his sense of humor.  I like his choice of subjects.  And I like the way he usually looks at things.  He is one of those people who can put complex issues into simple terms.  He often suggests solutions or, should I say, possible course of actions, for the problems that he talks about.

In “I Think I Love My Wife”, Chris Rock explores marriage, the way relationship between husband and wife changes from the wedding day, through years of living together, having kids, daily routines, and things like that.  I have to say that once again he manages to put rather complex issues into simple words and clear perspectives.  However, this time I wasn’t very satisfied with the way the story ended.  It was like an exploration, during which the explorer got scared and aborted the mission.  Maybe because he got scared.  Or maybe because he wasn’t as far there as he was trying to push the movie.  I don’t know.  What I know is that the film went like 80% of the way and then suddenly ended.  And that was a disappointment, since I really enjoyed the journey.

6 out of 10.  Recommended for married couples.