Scorsese does it again. While Shutter Island is not about the mob or gangs or Italy or wiseguys or illegal drugs, it still has that Scorsese feel. There are a few common elements carried over from his previous film The Departed, such as Boston accents and Leonardo DiCaprio, but that is where the similarities end. There are only about 10 “f-bombs”, in contrast to the 100+ in his other films. There are 2 violent/bloody scenes, in contrast to the usual 10+ in his other films. An finally, there are 0 crazy, old, tough-guy actors (Robert Deniros, Joe Pescis, and Jack Nicolsons), in contrast to 1+ of his other films. The point is that Martin Scorsese has deviated from the type of film genre he usually dabbles in (quite successfully) to venture into the realm of psychological thriller, and he proves that he is quite skilled in it. I’m hoping for a romantic comedy next, followed by a new installment in the college humor Van Wilder series.

The Good

When I go see a film in this genre, I am aiming to experience that good ol’ frightened feeling. Not the type that makes me jump out of my seat, but the type that runs a little deeper in the “disturbing” department and causes me to intermittently reflect back on the movie over the next week, remembering how disturbing it was and trying not to spoil it for people who haven’t seen it yet. So, how does Mr. Scorsese approach this genre? Take a look at the following elements that he uses in Shutter Island:

• A 1950s mental institution
• An island with one way on and one way off
• A lighthouse
• A brewing storm
• A German psychiatrist
• People smoking cigarettes (aaaaahhh!!!)

How can that movie not be scary? Even if Micheal Bay directed that movie, it would still be scary for at least 1 minute, depending on who composed the music. BURN! Think about it – old mental institutions are just plain scary because you never know what type of weird brain surgeries they’re performing on their patients. An island in the North Atlantic surrounded by 100-foot shear bluffs? Scary. A lighthouse? Scary (see: The Ring). A brewing storm? Adds that element of ominous evil. A German psychiatrist? Seeing as how the Nazis performed all those crazy psychiatric experiments – scary.

So, it is scary. We know that now. But what else was good? Leonardo DiCaprio was very very good. He plays the all-to-familiar character with a troubled past. But it’s what we find out about his past that blows the familiarity away. What really makes this film stand out, however, is the plot. If you haven’t seen it, you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog post anyway, but at least don’t read the next sentence, because even though I’m not saying anything specific about the movie, it will still probably lessen the whole experience for you. Shutter Island is one of those films that you think you have figured out early on, but then it purposely causes you to second guess your initial prediction, and then it makes you go back and forth the rest of the movie. “Oh I know how this ends…”, “Nevermind, I have no idea how this ends…”, “Oh… wait, yep – I know what’s going to happen…”, “Actually, shoot, nope, I think I’m wrong… or am I?” And it makes you do that literally until that last frame of film.

This is definitely one of those movies that you will most definitely have to have conversations about afterwards. You know how people talked about the Spielberg film “A.I.”? Well this will cause some similar discussions. Pay attention to the very last line of dialog that Leonardo DiCaprio says. I know what it means – but did you catch it?

One final word on The Good of Shutter Island (spoiler!): it does such a good job with the insaneness of some of the characters, that a few times I started thinking things like “What if I’m not really sitting here in this chair watching this movie? What if I’m actually insane right now and none of this is real?” And I love that it could do that to me.

The Bad

There was a section of the movie, from about 60% of the way through to about 90% of the way through, that started to lose me. And that’s a big chunk of film. There was so much vague, referential dialog that I started forgetting who was who. I know the purpose was to make you try to figure out what was real and what was imagined, but it went on too long and started to lose some of the audience. It started to lose some of its realism and poignancy for me, and I wish it would have kept us guessing a little bit more. Despite the fact that later in the film we are thrown off the scent again, I don’t like how long of a section of the film I was sitting there sure where it was going to go, and some of the conversations could have been cut in half. The flashbacks started getting a little redundant too. They were all pretty much the same thing, and they were mostly in slow motion, which put me in a different place and made it harder for the film to pull me back in once the flashback was over.

The Beratings

Acting – No Beratings. Leo shines, as do the psychiatrist characters.

Plot – No Beratings. Keeps you guessing, even after you think you guessed the ending.

Inconsistencies – 1 Berating. I’m deducting a point for the 60-90% section of the film I talked about earlier.

Unbelievable Events – No Beratings. The insane factor actually makes everything quite believable.

Semantics – 1 Berating. The flashbacks were too much, enough to merit a berating point.

2/10 Beratings = See it at full price

The Berating Scale
0/10 Stand in line for the very first showing
1/10 See it the first weekend
» 2/10 See it at full price
3/10 See it at the Five-Buck-Club
4/10 See it at the dollar-fifty
5/10 See it OnDemand
6/10 Rent it from Blockbuster
7/10 Watch it on TV
8/10 Watch it purely for spousal points
9/10 Never watch it
10/10 Buy it and publicly destroy it

Have you ever been so immersed in a story or character that you forget it is not real? Avatar does that to you. After seeing the film, it’s hard to remember that the blue-skinned alien race called the Na’vi doesn’t actually exist. It’s hard to imagine that Biff from Back To The Future isn’t a jerk in real life. Or that Middle Earth isn’t a real place. It’s because of good film-making that those things are so convincing. If I could sum up Avatar in a single phrase, it wouldn’t be “master storytelling”, “heart-wrenching drama”, “superb characters”, or even “ground-breaking”, it would simply be “superb film-making”. James Cameron knows how to make a film into an event that you can’t miss. Audiences were greatly affected by movies like The Terminator, Aliens, and Titanic. Well we can definitely add Avatar to the ever-growing list of must-sees in the theater.

The Good

I can’t remember a more magical world or desirable setting I’ve wanted to live in than the one created in Avatar. Not even Dazed & Confused. James Cameron thought let’s take Earth, make everything huge and photo-luminescent, and give everyone epic flying mounts so they can ride through floating mountains. Then he took all these natural elements and infused machinery and industry by added a futuristic drilling company, complete with monstrous mining equipment, mech-warrior-esque bots, and flying battleships.

The culmination of this dichotomy happens when the drilling company decides to take out the Na’vi tribe’s home. I especially loved that scene because it pits the might of nature against the cunning of man. Hundreds of missiles are launched in an all-out aerial assault on the largest living organism in the galaxy – a half-mile high, football field-thick tree that is home to the entire tribe. It is a pretty epic and moving scene when the tree is finally felled, and it is a good example of the conflict Avatar presents.

This is the next generation of CGI. The Na’vi were so meticulously created that they seem like a real species. The hardest part about doing CGI is human faces. You could say it is the last element that remains un-perfected, and certainly unrefined. The reason is that humans have a special area of the brain that is dedicated to recognizing human facial structures and facial expressions. That is why we can meet thousands of people in our lives with pretty much the same overall facial structure (2 eyes, 1 nose, about the same size head, etc.), all of which are capable of making thousands of facial expressions, and you and I instantly know who is who and what they’re feeling inside based solely on their face. So, imagine how hard it would be to create convincing CGI involving human faces. Avatar has gotten closer than ever before, and it is worth seeing the film just for this point.

As Jake Sulley discovers the world of Pandora, the audience discovers it with him. There are so many original and interesting things that we come across, everything from the flying mount rite of passage to the suspended hammocks they sleep in. It is so depressing each time Jake actually wakes back up and leaves his Avatar on standby somewhere out there in the jungle – for him and for the audience. Imagine having to leave Neverland or Narnia, and add in the fact that you are not only leaving such a magical world, but the person you have fallen in love with as well. Blast you James Cameron! How do you make love stories so appealing to a regular dude like me?!

Yes, there is a love story. And it is pretty good, although not on the level of Titanic. What takes precedence to the specific love story between Jake and his woman is the love story between Jake and the world of the Na’vi. And the reason we are able to fall in love along with Jake is because of the caliber of film-making. The sequence of events, the emotional highs and lows, the genuineness of the characters, the camera work, the effects – they all had a lot of time and effort put into them.

With the exception of Michelle Rodriguez. Why does she ever get put in a movie? Which leads us to…

The Bad

Michelle Rodriguez is the most worthless actor in Hollywood. Please find me a movie where she has any sort of genuine or natural dialogue. That is a direct challenge to you. You won’t find it in Avatar, that’s for sure. She has maybe 20 lines in the movie. Guess how many of them are not one-liners? None. “I didn’t sign up for this shit.” “You got what it takes, Marine?” “You should see your faces.” And 17 others that you will have to endure if you see Avatar. Michelle, on behalf of everyone who pays $11 for a movie ticket, please go work at a body shop or join the actual Marines.

There were plenty of unbelievable events in Avatar. Pretty much from the time Jake takes down the corporal’s ship to when Jake’s love Neytiri figures out how to put the mask on him, there is not one believable event. Here’s a quick list of things I noticed:

• Jake’s avatar falls hundreds of feet to the ground and gets up running without a scratch
• The Corporal in his mech suit falls hundreds of feet and slams onto the ground, and neither the corporal nor the mechanical suit are injured or broken in any way
• Jake takes on the mech suit in hand-to-hand combat and appears to be just as strong as the mech suit
• Again in the same combat sequence, the mech suit appears to be just as agile as Jake
• The mech suit loses its gun and unsheaths a knife. Is this thing a robot or a human?
• Neytiri somehow gains all knowledge on the human technology of the avatar program and knows where Jake’s real body is, that it needs oxygen (which she’s never heard of), and how to put the mask on him to save his life.

This all happens in the same 10 minute sequence at the climax of the movie. Cameron really could have sealed the deal with a climax the likes of The Matrix or Return of the Jedi, but instead he regresses into a series of classic action movie cliches.

If you read between the lines, it could be apparent that James Cameron is trying to preach environmentalism, Buddhism, and that the US should have left the Native Americans alone. I would slightly disagree with those ideas. I think Avatar is a commentary on humanity overall, not just on current events in America. Since humankind began, superpowers have expanded and gained power over others, because that is human nature. It is also human nature to sacrifice the natural world for the advancement of technology and civilization. Just because we find a new planet doesn’t mean we’re not going to let our humanity show through. In Avatar, humanity loses the battle against the indigenous population. What I take away from this movie is that maybe we were not meant to be on Pandora.

The film does tend to glorify the oneness with nature that the Na’vi have, and it gets a little old after a while. However Pandora is different than Earth because the beings that inhabit it can literally plug in to the network of nature via a very physical communication system. We can’t employ mind control on horses simply by plugging into them, but on Pandora you can create an instant, eternal bond with the same type of animal via the natural communication jack that every living being has. There are completely new and unique lifeforms in a world we have never been to or seen before, so I wouldn’t be too quick to compare every element in Pandora to an Earthly equivalent.

The bottom line is, yes James Cameron has certain political ideas that he could be expressing through his film, but no they don’t ruin the movie. You can easily accept this film as what it is, and enjoy it. That is, unless you come in with a prior agenda of your own.

The Beratings

Acting – No Beratings. Any lack of acting by Michelle Rodriguez is more than compensated for by Giovanni Ribisi. Sam Worthington also creates a very likable and relatable protagonist.

Plot – No Beratings. Wasn’t The Matrix, but it was good enough to keep me enthralled for almost 3 hours.

Inconsistencies – 1 Berating. We spend 45 minutes watching the development of how agile the Na’vi are, and then we see one of them fight a bulky mech warrior and he can’t even get behind it. Despite being undeniably chosen by the Na’vi deity as their savior, Jake is cast out of the tribe without any sign of betrayal on his part. Then accepted back in immediately when he arrives on a bigger dragon.

Unbelievable Events – 1 Berating. See bulleted list in “The Bad” section above. Also, the “Flux Vortex” didn’t make any sense. How can there be floating mountains? Gravity? Magnetism? I looked up the term “flux vortex” and couldn’t find a thing about it.

Semantics – No Beratings. Great soundtrack, CGI, originality, etc.

2/10 Beratings = See it at full price

0/10 Stand in line for the very first showing
1/10 See it the first weekend
» 2/10 See it at full price
3/10 See it at the Five-Buck-Club
4/10 See it at the dollar-fifty
5/10 See it OnDemand
6/10 Rent it from Blockbuster
7/10 Watch it on TV
8/10 Watch it purely for spousal points
9/10 Never watch it
10/10 Buy it and publicly destroy it

There’s something inside of me that wants to be scared, and that’s why I am constantly pursuing the feeling of fear, whether it’s riding the most thrilling roller coaster on the face of the planet (Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point), camping in the middle of the deep dark woods, or seeing scary movies. Coasters and camping are still able to invoke a decent amount of fear in me (although not as much as they used to), but movies are unable to do so. I have not been truly scared of a movie for a long time. That is, until last night.

There have been some good movies that have come close. For instance, The Ring scared me, as did The Others and 1408. And I’m not talking about jumping out of my seat because something on the screen startled me, I’m referring to the sort of scared that sticks with you and interferes with your sleep. I realize that there are a lot of people out there who absolutely do not want to be scared in this way, and that is just fine. But if you are like me and you secretly love that rare feeling of truly being frightened to your core, then go see Paranormal Activity in the theaters as soon as possible.

The Good

They got it right, finally. The best part of scary movies is always the first half as everything starts to build up. It’s the closing act that is always the worst, because you see whatever it is that is supposed to be scary, and we all know that the only thing to fear is fear itself. That is to say, once we know what it is we are fearing, it suddenly loses its potency. The scariness of most scary movies basically boils down to nothing more than how long it takes until we actually see what it is we’re supposed to be scared of. The reason Paranormal Activity is so good is because it saves it until the last 10 seconds of film, and you could argue that it never really even shows us.

There are no credits, no movie studio logos, and no music at the end of the movie. You simply sit there too scared to move, listening to the low rumbling sound and staring at a black screen with just the faintest amount of greenish light coming through. Then you have to go home and try to sleep, and let me tell you this is no easy task.

This movie contains no gore, no special effects, only 4 actors, and takes place all in the same house. And yet it is the absolute scariest movie I have ever seen – bar none. It goes to show that you don’t need a bunch of fancy special effects and quick crazy scenes to make a scary movie. It is shot in a mockumentary style, similarly to Cloverfield, The Blair Witch Project, and District 9, and coincidentally I have loved all of those films.

The Bad

SPOILER ALERT

While I try to stick with the caliber of filmmaking when doing beratings, I can’t help but to point out something that bothered me about some of the motivations behind this film. The woman slowly becomes possessed by a demon throughout the film. The actors are aware of this since a psychic that comes to their house tells them it is not a ghost but in fact a demon. Being a Christian, I know that demons exist, and it is not something to be taken lightly. I am OK with talking about demons in a film, but the problem comes when you don’t talk about the other side of the coin: Jesus Christ. The only way to cast out demons is with His authority, and that seems to me to be a rather well known fact – even among the secular community (via films like The Exorcist). For a movie that spent so much time delving into the realm of the spiritual world, not a single thing was mentioned having anything to do with God (apart from a solitary scene where Katie was holding a bloody cross, which was subsequently burnt).

The Beratings

Acting – No Beratings. You never even notice the two main actors are even acting. They seem so real, like they’re just a young couple that are being spooked by a presence in their house.

Plot – No Beratings. The sequence of events and the build-up is what makes this film good.

Inconsistencies – No Beratings. Everything that happens is likely to have been recorded by Micah and his hand held camera.

Unbelievable Events – 1 Berating. I just don’t see how they wouldn’t be even more petrified than they were. I would have called a priest and/or left the house immediately Even though the demon followed Katie wherever she went, human nature still would be to run from the evil spirit.

Schematics – No Beratings. The movie had surprisingly well-done scenes and very eerie sound effects.

1/10 Beratings = See it the first weekend

0/10 Stand in line for the very first showing
» 1/10 See it the first weekend
2/10 See it at full price
3/10 See it at the Five-Buck-Club
4/10 See it at the dollar-fifty
5/10 See it OnDemand
6/10 Rent it from Blockbuster
7/10 Watch it on TV
8/10 Watch it purely for spousal points
9/10 Never watch it
10/10 Buy it and publicly destroy it

Did you know a gaggle only refers to geese on the ground? In the air they’re referred to as a skein. I don’t know why I told you that. Maybe you should Twitter it you twidiot¹. I don’t always have time to Berate a movie after I’ve seen it because I have a job and a wife and there’s beer to be drunk and I’m too busy retweeting about Conan episodes that make fun of Twitter. J/k, what is a retweet? Is it something? Because I think I’ve heard of it. So I’ve decided that I still want to have a record of my reaction to movies I’ve seen even if I don’t have the time to write a full Berating, and in doing so I have made up my second new word of this blog post: Briefratings². And you’re about to get a gaggle of them and agree with everything I write as usual. (I’ll do whatever I have to do to get you to comment on TGM).

Here’s a refresher on the Beratings scale:

0/10 Stand in line for the very first showing
1/10 See it the first weekend
2/10 See it at full price
3/10 See it at the Five-Buck-Club
4/10 See it at the dollar-fifty
5/10 See it OnDemand
6/10 Rent it from Blockbuster
7/10 Watch it on TV
8/10 Watch it purely for spousal points
9/10 Never watch it
10/10 Buy it and publicly destroy it

And now for the Beratings. These are not in any particular order:

Taken

Acting – No Beratings. Good acting job by Liam Neeson, as always.

Plot – 1 Berating. A guy’s daughter gets kidnapped, he goes and gets her back. Been done way too many times.

Inconsistencies – 1 Beratings. A very sophisticated and deep-running human trafficking operation was uncovered. And nobody cares.

Unbelievable Events – 2 Beratings. A guy kills people and blows up stuff in multiple countries and does whatever he wants and nothing happens to him. No arrests. No injuries. Only three people can do that: Jason Bourne, Chuck Norris, and James Bond, and they already have movies.

Schematics – No Beratings. Good action shots and tense atmosphere.

4/10 Beratings = See it at the dollar-fifty

The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift

Acting – 2 Beratings. Lucas Black is capable of only one facial expression: sullen.

Plot – 2 Beratings. I was 5 steps ahead of this movie the entire time.

Inconsistencies – No Beratings. At least the movie knows what its demographic wants, and it consistently gives it to them.

Unbelievable Events – 2 Beratings. A guy can’t learn to drift that well that fast. The same guy can’t wreck peoples’ cars and not face any real consequences. None of the characters react the way a real person would react to any of the situations presented.

Schematics – 1 Berating. Why is it always 2 in the morning? Isn’t there sunlight in Tokyo?!

7/10 Beratings = Watch it on TV

Luckily that’s exactly what I did. Let me just say that at least it’s better than Gone In 60 Suckonds.

Defiance

Acting – No Beratings. Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber were amazing.

Plot – No Beratings. Had me on the edge of my seat. Besides if I said the plot was bad I would be saying real life is bad since this is based on true events.

Inconsistencies – No Beratings.

Unbelievable Events – No Beratings. Once again, this really happened.

Schematics – No Beratings. Haven’t seen a film like this in a long time.

0/10 Beratings = Stand in line for the very first showing

Ghost Rider

Acting – 2 Beratings. Nick Cage was not good. Neither was anyone else.

Plot – 2 Beratings. Baaaaaad plot.

Inconsistencies – 1 Berating. I don’t remember what it was, but I can assure you someone does something inconsistent with their character at least once.

Unbelievable Events – 2 Beratings. Just watch 5 minutes and you’ll see what I mean.

Schematics – 2 Beratings. Unrealistic CGI, way too dark, bad soundtrack.

9/10 Beratings = Never watch it

Star Trek

Acting – No Beratings. I love no-name casts, especially when they perform this well. They won’t be no-name for long.

Plot – No Beratings. Although a little confusing and somewhat of a cop-out, it was very clever how they explained eveything with time travel. Doesn’t deserve a berating for plot.

Inconsistencies – No Beratings. Shucks, there could have been, but it’s been so long since I’ve seen it I don’t remember.

Unbelievable Events – 2 Beratings. I loved this movie, but I’m so sick of scientific liberties being taken with no regard for realism. Let’s just list one example: they would have died in the scene where they were parachuting to stop the drill. No question.

Schematics – No Beratings. Another well-made J. J. Abrams film.

2/10 Beratings = See it at full price

I Love You, Man

Acting – 1 Berating. I don’t find Jason Segel to be a very good actor, and he had a lot of screen time here. I also don’t like Rashida Jones. She got annoying after a few episodes on The Office and has stayed annoying ever since. Paul Rudd made this movie

Plot – 1 Berating. Nothing really happened. That’s OK as long as the movie in question is Dazed & Confused.

Inconsistencies – No Beratings.

Unbelievable Events – 1 Berating. There isn’t a guy like Jason Segel’s character in the whole world, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be.

Schematics – No Beratings. A good comedy that doesn’t rely too heavily on slapstick humor.

3/10 Beratings = See it at the Five-Buck-Club

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Acting – 2 Beratings. Why was Kat Dennings cast to be in this movie – or any movie for that matter? She’s terrible. Micheal Cera didn’t do anything great either.

Plot – 2 Beratings. Nothing happened. Except pretentiousness.

Inconsistencies – No Beratings.

Unbelievable Events – 2 Beratings. People don’t meet like this. People don’t act like this. They just don’t.

Schematics – 2 Beratings. I don’t like the way this film was made. It was so boring.

8/10 Beratings = Watch it purely for spousal points

More to come!

Footnotes —

¹ Twidiot: someone who uses Twitter as a public announcement platform for uninteresting personal things.

² Briefratings: do you seriously not know what this means?

District 9 is one of those rare gems where the cast is made up of entirely unknowns, directed by an unknown, and set in an unknown place (there’s a city in South Africa with buildings? is South Africa like a country or something? more ignorant questions). That’s why it’s such a good movie. It’s like Star Wars IV or Cloverfield or Napoleon Dynamite. I guess what I’m saying is it can only go down from here. So let’s all enjoy this movie while we still can. Everyone go out and see this movie and support directors that make special effects who are not Micheal Bay. Do it for the children.

SPOILER

An alien spacecraft comes to earth in 1990 and stops directly over Johannesburg and just sits there for like 3 months and the government wants to be humanitarian (don’t they know that word has “human” in it?) and go help the aliens so they go up to the ship and somehow break in to this ginormous ship even though they are incapable of firing the simplest alien pistol and find a million aliens who are all about to starve to death and decide to take them and put them in a sectioned-off part of their city called District 9 until they can figure out what to do with them. 20 years later it’s getting out of control because the aliens are breeding rapidly and causing crime and deaths and so the government decides to evict them and there are Nigerians involved who engage in gang activity with the aliens who complicate things because they are benefiting off of the aliens being in the city. The human protagonist Wikus gets infected with alien DNA and starts to change into one and is able to fire the super advanced alien weaponry and thus becomes invaluable to the government because they want to use him for his DNA. Oh and also the government is corrupt and so Wikus has to hide from the government and the Nigerians among the aliens while he is going through this transition.

The movie begins documentary style and for a while I thought the whole thing was going to be done in this manner, which at that time I wasn’t really looking forward to. About 20 minutes in it began to transition into live action in such a seamless manner that I didn’t realize until most of the way through that it had even made the transition. It was done in a very unique way and somewhat reminded me of the film making style used in Cloverfield. Let’s explore some of the things that made this movie good, and a few things I could have done without.

The Good

Let me just say that I loved this movie. I could see pretty well where the plot was going, but the journey was most of the fun. The first time one of the alien weapons was fired I got chills. The special effects were done in such a way that I almost forgot that they weren’t real. The visual style of District 9 is very gritty, and the special effects blend in very nicely. They aren’t colorful like Transfomers 2. They aren’t completely monotone and dark like Terminator 4. They are exactly what they should be – extensions of real life scenes and action sequences. For instance, one scene involves a truck ramming into a mechanical walking robot. The robot is CGI (not because it looks CGI, but because you just know it is), but the truck is real. They could have done the whole shot in CGI like they would have done in a Micheal Bay film, but they chose to blend the CGI with real world objects, and I have found that is where the best action sequences are born. Here are a few examples of good CGI/real-world object blending:

The actor who played Wikus is likable in a pitiful sort of way, although he makes bad decisions and isn’t the brightest man alive. I enjoyed watching his transformation, physical and psychological. The budget for District 9 was $30 million. In comparison, the budget for Transformers 2 was $200+ million. Despite this huge difference in funding, District 9 had much more amazing and poignant special effects, and overall felt a lot more real. There were just as many scenes featuring special effects in District 9 as there were in Transformers 2, because the aliens were in almost every scene. I realize T2 had to pay big name actors and went on a marketing blitz, but that still leaves at least $100 million for production expenses (probably much more than that). This only goes to show that what makes a movie good is quality and creativity, not money and sex.

The weapons were quite stunning. I found myself yearning to see another out of this world weapon being fired, and every time I got what I wanted. Such advanced machinery and technology in the same frames as dirty, run-down hovels and trash is what makes this movie stand out:

The last 20 minutes of the film blew me away. When Wikus was driving the mech-warrior suit and fending off an entire army of soldiers shooting everything from pistols to mini-guns, and then he caught that RPG in mid-flight and flung it aside, there literally were cheers in the theater, and I was one of the people that audibly cheered. I haven’t experienced audience response like that since The Matrix. It seemed like there was nothing that couldn’t be done, and nowhere we couldn’t go, and I attribute that to Neil Blomcamp, director and screenwriter.

The Bad

There were some unbelievable events, as well as inconsistencies in District 9. First of all, I don’t believe humans would stand for the type of violence and rampage caused by an alien race and not wage war against the offending party. Going in and nicely asking for signatures on eviction documents amidst blatantly unruly aliens that are fighting back and killing government officials is ludicrous. No human would enter with such light armor and limited weapons into an area with 1.5 million aliens, all of which are bigger and stronger than any human, and most of which have weapons that could take out a building.

Also, if an alien ship 3 miles long with a million aliens was hovering over a city somewhere on Earth, I don’t care which country it is in, the entire world would be involved – not just the local government. It was totally unbelievable how a couple of corrupt local government guys could be running the show in an event of this magnitude.

One inconsistency was that the ship was apparently broken and not able to return home, but somehow at the end of the movie one alien was able to fix it from the ground and leave. If he was able to fix it with no resources by himself 500 yards away from it, how could a million of them not fix it during the 3 months they sat inside the actual ship before humans “rescued” them?

Also, the range of intelligence and moral conduct amongst the alien race was not consistent. Every alien was savage, hostile, and not smart enough to not get killed by some very dumb humans. Every alien except one, who happened to be super smart and super heroic and super forgiving. Are there other aliens like this? Why was he so different from every other alien? The movie never explained it and it leaves a gaping inconsistent hole.

The Beratings

Acting – No Beratings. I love no-name actors because they usually don’t seem to have egos.

Plot – No Beratings. Not the most complex plot, but original nonetheless.

Inconsistencies – 1 Berating.

Unbelievable Events – 1 Berating.

Schematics – No Beratings. The movie was well-made, especially for a $30 million budget.

2/10 Beratings = See it at full price

0/10 Stand in line for the very first showing
1/10 See it the first weekend
» 2/10 See it at full price
3/10 See it at the Five-Buck-Club
4/10 See it at the dollar-fifty
5/10 See it OnDemand
6/10 Rent it from Blockbuster
7/10 Watch it on TV
8/10 Watch it purely for spousal points
9/10 Never watch it
10/10 Buy it and publicly destroy it

Seriously, moviegoers?! You liked Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen?

There are two explanations for the way I feel about the downward-sloping overall quality of movies over the past few years. 1) I am getting older and my taste has become more refined, or 2) greed has ruined the movie industry by encouraging quantity over quality. Seeing as how my favorite cuisine is Taco Bell, I own a Nick Lachey album, and prefer Miller Lite when it comes to beers, the first explanation has to be impossible.

So, it’s greed. Greedy movie studio executives (is that redundant?) are buying up film rights to old cartoon franchises faster than Grand Theft Auto fanboys were buying San Andreas before it was pulled from the shelves in 2005. However, placing the blame for terrible movies on film execs is like blaming GM for the decline of domestic automobiles. Film execs represent a corporation, which exists solely to make money. They will do whatever they can get away with to cause consumers (which in the case of GM includes the government) to spend money on their product. While it is because of filmmakers that films are terrible, it is not their fault. The blame should be placed on the American consumer. You. It is your fault.

Even if you disagree with the first two paragraphs, you cannot hide from the following fact: most people love terrible movies, and that is what this blog post as about. To illustrate this point, lets take a look at a recent disaster of a movie: Transformers 2. When I first saw the movie I was stunned at how utterly terrible it was. I immediately went online and read the review by Roger Ebert, who had this to say:

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments.”

Maybe the world is not doomed after all! There is at least one man of considerable respect who agrees with me. Then I started researching other reviews, and I came across this one from Time magazine:

“My son does not own any Transformer dolls. I’m sorry, make that Transformer action figures. But if he did, upon my return from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I would have taken these Hasbro toys outside, placed them under the wheels of the car and driven back and forth across them until they were ground into dust.”

I was beginning to feel validated as a human being. I wanted more. So I read Rolling Stone’s review, which included this line:

“I know there are still 17 months to go, but I’m thinking Transformers 2 has a shot at the title Worst Movie of the Decade.”

Yes! Thank you Rolling Stone (which gave the movie a 0 on a scale of 0-100 by the way). At this point I had read some individual reviews from prominent film critics. Whether or not you generally tend to agree with these guys, you can at least acknowledge that they know the elements that are supposed to compose a film. Even so, if you do happen to have a specific aversion to Ebert or Travers, there are other ways to find out whether or not a movie is good or bad. The best way is to look at all the top critics at once. There are a lot of sites that compile reviews, but there are three in particular that I think represent how good or bad a film truly is, and they are Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and Yahoo Movies.

On each of these three sites there are two figures, the first represents an average of all the critics reviews, and the second represents an average of all the user reviews (non-critics – regular people). Rotten Tomatoes gives Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen a 20/100 (219 reviews counted), Metacritic gives it a 35/100 (32 reviews counted), and Yahoo Movies gives it a C- (14 reviews counted). It’s one thing for one person to hate your movie, but if 80% of film critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 65% on Metacritic hated it, your film is aweful. Remember, that doesn’t mean that the other 20% on Rotten Tomatoes or 35% on Metacritic loved it, it just means they didn’t give it a terrible review. Most of the “positive” reviews were probably nothing more than 2/4 stars or a 5/10.

Have I beaten this point into the ground enough? We can all agree that anyone who’s anyone hated this movie. All the film critics hated it, and more importantly TGM hated it. So why the need for this blog post? It’s called the ugly truth, and it is that despite all the facts presented, the majority of people actually liked Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

How do I know this? Again, let’s have a look at the facts. The user rating for Transformers 2 on Rotten Tomatoes is 58/100 (5,740 reviews counted), on Metacritic it is 6/10 (743 votes counted), and on Yahoo Movies it is a B+ (21,441 ratings counted). If almost 6,000 people think this movie deserves a 6/10 on a site where over 200 critics thought the same movie deserves a 2/10, we have a problem. That is a huge discrepancy, and with such a large pool of user ratings it can’t be left up to chance or a personal vendetta against the director or something like that. How can over 21 thousand people on Yahoo Movies rate this movie just shy of an “A” when almost every critic despises it? Is this phenomenon contained to just Transformers 2? Than answer, sadly, is no. Here are a some other movies and their corresponding critic and user scores:

Between these two sites, this list’s average critic rating per movie is 28.7, and the average user rating per movie is 61.3. That means the user ratings are 113% higher than the critic ratings. How can this be?

My theory is that the layman fails to make a crucial distinction, and it’s a distinction that can really play into other areas of your life if you truly learn how to make it. There is a difference between a “movie that is good” and a “movie that you enjoyed”. There are plenty of times one should deem it appropriate to say to someone that they like a movie but that they don’t recommend it. They should be able to distinguish between their particular liking of a particular movie, and how good it is as a film. For instance, I love Starship Troopers and it’s one of my favorite movies, not because it is such a well-made movie with good acting and plot, but because I saw it as a teenager with good friends and we frequently quote it and talk about hilarious scenes from it and it has lots of awesome violence and stuff we had never seen before. While I own the movie and enjoy watching it, given the chance to rate it on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m sure the score wouldn’t be much higher than a 40/100.

It’s an interesting phenomenon. It’s almost as if people are afraid to rate a movie poorly because they feel in doing so it takes away their ability to watch it and still enjoy it. I would describe this psychological phenomenon as nothing more than Opinion-Esteem Disorder™ which is a term I just created and has now become trademarked before your eyes. If you think about it, it’s true – people generally are sensitive about their opinions and often strive to push them on others. Sometimes consciously, more often subconsiously. The more people that share your opinion, the more your opinion is validated, and the less hesitant your are to tout your opinions around town. However, if too many people jump on board, it can be tempting to jump to the other side of the spectrum, which is called Pop Aversion Theory™, described in a previous blog post of mine entitled “Why Do People Hate Titanic?”. Be sure to read the comments, as a lot of what’s discussed is very relevant to this blog post.

Opinion-Esteem Disorder™ sounds like a natural, logical function of our psyche, but in reality I think it is actually a negative trait of human nature. You should be proud of your opinion even if you’re the only one who has it. While I don’t seem to struggle in this area when it comes to movies, I definitely run into it in other areas of interest to some degree, so don’t think I’m immune to it.

So why does any of this matter? It matters because Transformers 2 earned $108,966,307 in its first week. That tells movie studios that we like this caliber of movie. More of these movies will be made. Resources that could have gone to better movies (budgets, actors, composers, sound stages, special effects departments) will be sucked into the black abyss of fast-food films. And I will have to watch the trailers for them while I sit and wait for my good movie to start. And despite all of my principles and standards, my curiosity will get the best of me and I will inevitably think to myself “I guess maybe Terminator 5: The Edge Of Reason could be good. Maybe I’ll see it…” And then I will be $10 poorer each time that happens.

America: make the distinction. I’m not telling you which movies you can watch, or even which movies you can like. I’m telling you which movies you can say are good movies. Stop tricking other, more skeptical people into seeing terrible films! Of course, all the people who liked Transformers 2 are probably just redneck Nascar fans. Shoot, I did so well with this post until that last sentence.

And now I will end with a funny video to offset the negative tone of this blog post. This is from The Abstinence episode where Kramer experiences a lifetime of smoking in 72 hours:

Now hold on just a second. I didn’t hate Twilight. As a matter of fact I think I liked it. It was enjoyable especially since Mike Dexter from Can’t Hardly Wait was in it. Except for the part where they run real fast. That was retarded.

(Image taken from imgur.com)

Michael Bay is a 15 year old boy trapped in a man’s body (and in the ’90s). He gets older, his movies stay the same age. I don’t know why I keep seeing his movies. I guess it is because when I was 15 I saw The Rock and it rocked (sorry) my 15-year-old little brain that desired nothing but violence/sex/wreckage/fast cars and had no time for character development, real-life situations, or dialogue. At the risk of sounding pretentious, Revenge of the Fallen is for one of two groups: A) 15 year old boys (or anyone with the mental capacity of a 15 year old boy), and B) people who are willing to forgo their dignity to publicly oggle over Megan Fox and Isabel Lucas for 2 hours (actually this is just another way of describing group A).

If you refer to the image I have conveniently included above, you will see a snapshot of exactly what this movie is: Shia is intense and scared, Megan is slightly less intense and scared and her breasts are half exposed, and they are surrounded by wreckage and GM cars. If that is what you want out of life then GO SEE THIS MOVIE RIGHT NOW WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR! Also when you’re done seeing Transformers rent the movie Idiocracy and tell me if you “get it” or not. You won’t.

SPOILER

In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (“T2″ henceforth) the Autobots (good guys) have been fighting along side the same army guys from the first Transformers (Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson) for 2 years against the remaining Decepticons in order to purge them from the Earth. Shia goes to college and the comic relief his parents are sad and also so is the eye candy his BFF/GF Megan from the first T’frmrs who works at an auto shop around grease monkey douche bags and is inappropriately dressed and extremely hot and is not ever messed with or looked at by any of these guys because that’s realistic. Shia finds a shard from The Cube which gave life to all the TFRMRS but was destroyed in the first one and gets secret codes imprinted onto his brain and is now the key to Megatron’s resurrection and also the savior of the world, which means the Autobots have to keep him safe and the Decepticons want to find him and extract his knowledge and kill him and steal the shard so they can re-ignite a machine hidden under the Pyramids in Egypt that they started building 20,000 years ago which is capable of shooting the Sun and blowing it up, which is their ultimate goal (because it’s possible to blow up a star). But even though all that sounds like it’s really important, what’s more important in the movie is how Megan is sad because Shia won’t say he loves her despite the fact that they are both still teenagers and their relationship is based solely on the extreme circumstances of the first Transformers (the movie Speed already taught us relationships started in this manner never last) and also despite the fact that he’s going away to college to live in a co-ed dorm filled with the absolute hottest women ever gathered into one building, the hottest of which, Isabel, immediately attacks him and gets him into bed his second day. One other thing, every car in the movie, even the ones in China and the Middle East, are obviously and conspicuously made by GM (except the Decepticon cars, they are made by German car companies).

The Good

The graphics were done by Industrial Light & Magic. Also, I have to give it to T2 in the sound editing department. Just like T1, I was blown away by the very imaginative and powerful sound effects. I know that doesn’t seem like something that could make a movie good, and believe me I have never noticed sound effects in a movie before, but if you watch the opening credits where the Dreamworks and Paramount logos are shown you will know what I mean. Some of the surround speakers way in the back in the movie theater had to do things I don’t think they’ve ever had to do. They were suddenly shouting “THIS IS WHY WE WERE MADE!” to each other across the room and giggling hysterically at 20,000 Hz.

The Bad

You know how when you go to a wedding and you don’t really know or like anyone and it’s really awkward and there is no alcohol and it’s in a really bad facility but you go through the buffet line and amidst all the terrible food there are those little cocktail weenies that you really like, and when people ask you how the wedding was you respond “well, they had those cocktail weenies” and by that they know what you really thought of it since that’s the only thing you can say? Well the sound effects mentioned above are the cocktail weenies of T2 (I wish I thought of another word besides “weenies”).

T2 was the most ridiculously unrealistic movie since Tomb Raider. Nothing in this movie ever has or will happen on our planet or any other. I sat there trying to figure out what exactly goes through Michael Bay’s mind on a daily basis. He’s literally like a dog who sees a squirrel and then a bone and then a fire hydrant all at the same time and then has no other reaction but to bark out of sheer sensory overload and that bark became this movie. Except at least squirrels and bones are real things that exist.

First of all let’s look at the premise of blowing up the Sun. It is so shallow to believe that ultimate evil only exists to just wipe us out and exterminate us. That, to me, is a 15-year-old boy’s view of evil. How does it benefit the Decepticons to extinguish the Sun? The movie does not explain any benefits they will receive from this. They just go from solar system to solar system blowing up Suns and that is why they exist. OK. Also, Michael Bay might want to do a little reading and realize that the Sun is, by definition, a perpetual nuclear explosion happening all the time. You can’t explode an explosion that big without just adding to it and making it stronger, thus doing the opposite of what you were trying to do. Also it is not large enough to create a supernova when it finally dies, so it’s not like that’s a plausible mechanism that can be artificially triggered by the Decepticons. The machine they want to use to kill the Sun is inside the Pyramid of Giza, which is about 700 feet long by 400 feet high. This covers but an infinitesimal fraction of the Earth’s surface. You can fit 1.3 million Earths inside the sun. MILLION. How in the world is this tiny machine supposed to dominate the power of the Sun? Luckily, 15-year-old boys don’t like school and thus don’t like science class and thus don’t care to be bothered by these types of explanations.

That is only one example of how this movie completely lacks physical realism of any kind. None of the maneuvers that the robots or human machines make are doable in real life – they would simply break with that amount of force applied (I don’t care how technologically advanced they are, the laws of physics still apply). Shia is again thrown 40 feet in the air multiple times and never breaks a bone. A large, sharp metal transformer with spikes and tenticles climbs forcefully through his mouth into his brain and ravages around to find information and comes back out and Shia doesn’t have the slightest bit of brain damage as a result (or even pain for that matter). Everyone in the movie experiences things that would put normal people into shock, but no one seems to be at all affected by any of it – they just keep going through the movie like super heroes. I wish they would’ve called this movie Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen In A World Full Of Regular Looking People Who Are Also Super Heroes.

I have never seen a group of more eccentric people in a movie. Dwight from The Office makes a cameo as a college professor who very conspicuously includes sexual innuendo in every other word of his lecture directed specifically at the freshmen girls in the front row, and this is done WHILE THE DEAN IS WATCHING and he is not fired and nobody says a word.

When Shia’s mom drops him off at college she eats some reefer brownies from a random student which are in a plastic bag with A LARGE MARIJUANA LEAF IMAGE ON IT and somehow didn’t realize what she was eating. She proceeds to act extremely drunk and belligerent which doesn’t make sense because she didn’t eat vodka brownies she ate reefer brownies. I guess 15-year-old boys are more prone to begin experimenting with alcohol than weed at that age and thus think that being high is just like being drunk and that would explain how this scene appealed to them?

(sorry that image doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m talking about)

A government official comes in and decides that the Autobots need to leave Earth even though they have been protecting us for 2 years because he is a politician and somehow he has the power to tell the Autobots to leave the entire planet instead of just America. Josh Duhamel later throws this government official off a plane at 30,000 feet and doesn’t get reprimanded since it is understood that even though he was still directly appointed by the president to oversee this operation, he was “a bad dude” and really everyone could see it if they looked hard enough.

Two of the Autobots (“The Twins”) are all rusty and old and so they simply drive into a garage and park next to two Scion-looking GM cars and the camera rotates and they magically become replicas of these cars because Transformers don’t just transform they BECOME ANYTHING THEY WANT JUST BY PARKING NEXT TO IT.

John Turturro from T1 who now works in a meat shop goes into his basement and has all the secret government files they need to find and defeat the Decepticons but no one else has these files or knowledge.

Megan trains a Decepticon like a dog and he ends up becoming good because he is attracted to her and eventually humps her leg even though he’s a Decepticon robot.

Megan, Shia, and John Turturro take a tazer gun into the National Air and Space Museum and break in and take down all the guards and cause wreckage and devastation to the priceless exhibits for hours and then go outside and draw symbols in the dirt for a few more hours and NO ONE EVER FINDS OUT OR CALLS THE COPS.

Do you seriously want me to keep going? Are you sure because that’s maybe 10% of the unrealistic things in this movie. I’m literally blown away by the amount of time I spent sitting in the theater thinking how blatantly unrealistic the movie was. At one point I looked around and saw several grown adult men glued to the edge of their seats and audibly cracking up at Michael Bay’s trademark genius one-liners.

This is not an exaggeration: more than one of the Autobots were voiced by what sounded like Eddie Griffin and existed solely to fill the token black guy bout-it bout-it funny man spot that all Micheal Bay movies create for themselves and then fill in with these annoying types of characters. I mean it was ridiculous when I sat back and processed what I was seeing. Large, majestic transformers suddenly bumbling around the screen saying things like “Aw sh*t, this was a bad idea” and “Boy you betta shut yo face for I bust it up, b*tch” and “Man look at this jerry-curl scrub – it’s like he’s got a porcupine on his head, yo!”

If you think what I just typed is at all an exaggeration or a joke, please go see T2 and come back and visit my blog and write your comment which will say something like “You warned me and I didn’t believe you. I will listen to you and believe you from now on. I am sorry.” You will be forgiven since your punishment was to see this movie.

The Beratings

Acting – One person in this movie was decent, and that was Aaron Pierce from the 24 TV series as the commander of the army. Everyone else was terrible. Megan was terrible. Tyrese Gibson was terrible and he only had 3 lines. For heaven’s sake John Turturro wasn’t even that good. It’s like his acting ability was purposefully stifled. I have to give this movie 2 Beratings for acting.

Plot – Like any sequel that is forcefully spewed out as quickly as possible following a blockbuster, this one had no plot because the first one didn’t leave any room for a second movie. There was no integration and the two films felt totally disconnected, and thus the plot for the sequel was picked out of thin air and felt totally forced the whole time. 2 Beratings.

Inconsistencies – Optimus Prime sacrificed himself to destroy The Cube and killed Megatron and it was over. Oh wait Megatron wasn’t even injured, just shut down and had to be rebooted. Then Optimus Prime died and everyone mourned and it was over for him and the key that could have turned him back on exploded into dust but then it came back and he lived after Shia died also and went to a weird robot heaveNONE OF THIS IS CONSISTENT WITH ANYTHING. 2 Beratings.

Unbelievable Events – NINE HUNDRED BERATINGS. Shoot I can only give it 2. Ok, 2 Beratings.

Schematics – 1 Berating. Great sound, great visual effects. The soundtrack was just a copy + paste from The Rock/Armageddon/Transformers 1, but that alone isn’t enough to earn the movie a berating. No, I’m docking this movie because at least 68% of the scenes were shot in the terribly played-out Michael Bay style where the camera is circling the action in a grandiose way as to say “this is the greatest scene of any movie” whether the subject is Shia and Megan kissing or the Pyramid of Giza being destoyed or Optimus Prime standing valiantly on a hill or a GM car driving on a dirt road or a person sitting on a chair reading a book on a Sunday afternoon.

“Mike, how should we shoot this one?”
“Let me think… have we used the Helicopter Circling Shot yet?”
“Yes”
“Cool. Let’s use the Helicopter Circling Shot again.”
“You are all things perfect to me.”
“I am Micheal Bay.”
“I love you Micheal Bay.”
“Thanks, I do too.”

That dialogue that probably happened in the studio almost made me change my mind to 2 Beratings, but I will be kind since it’s Friday and only give it 1.

9/10 Beratings = Never watch it

0/10 Stand in line for the very first showing
1/10 See it the first weekend
2/10 See it at full price
3/10 See it at the Five-Buck-Club
4/10 See it at the dollar-fifty
5/10 See it OnDemand
6/10 Rent it from Blockbuster
7/10 Watch it on TV
8/10 Watch it purely for spousal points
>> 9/10 Never watch it
10/10 Buy it and publicly destroy it

Rest assured I will be seeing this movie. Martin Scorcese has never let me down. Even with Gangs of New York (it was enjoyable right?)

P.S. sorry for the format of the embedded video. I couldn’t find one that was narrower. Oh well, it still works. You know what, I take that back. This is my blog and I apologize to no one! (I apologize for my arrogance.)

The Hangover will be at least as good as Old School. It will be funny. It is going to be really funny. Oh also when you’re done with Dodgeball go ahead and rent Role Models because that is your other favorite movie, plus Ghost Rider starring Nick “Wig” Cage.