2009 lists come to an end

More end the line insanity from 2009 from my pal Matt Brassfield who is the manager of Game Swap in Kettering and also runs Independent B-Movie, and is the director of the infamous WEREWOLF OF OHIO. I wonder if he was overworked or dipping into the crack bowl on some of these picks, but I am not one to judge!

10 0f 2009







1.) X-Men Origins Wolverine – Now I know what your saying most the people that have been on this website have trashed this film, but I for one was highly entertained by its popcorn action. Hugh Jackman did a great job once again as Wolverine and while not as bloody as it should be it made for a solid PG-13 film.





2.) Watchmen – “Who’s watching the Watchmen?” well me and many others a smart comic book film that is packed with great acting and a great script. Love the fact it’s more of a film noir drama then a beat em up super hero flick. Very smart film.




3.) Star Trek – A good reboot to the Star Trek series, great cast who all seem to get there roles as well as a solid script. If your looking for a good big budget sci-fi flick then this is for you. Plus with Leonard Nimoy as Spock again this is a good film for all Trekkies.




4.) Terminator Salvation – This one blows part three out of the water and is high action sci-fi popcorn flick. The plot while not 100% solid does have a charm to it that tries to tie in all the other sequels. Lots of action and a tad drama make this a good summer movie. Plus the Arnold clone makes it kick ass.




5.) Trick r’ Treat – What a great horror flick that has heart and truly brings back the anthology to the horror genre that was long over do. The acting is amazing with Anna Paquin looking stunning at little red riding hood. If you haven’t seen this fun film then you should go out and pick it up.





6.) Saw 6 – A Horror film with a message about out Health care! It’s not every day you get a smart horror film that’s packed with gruesome deaths and enough blood to make a slaughterhouse look clean. Jigsaw’s game continues and I had a lot of fun viewing this one.





7.) Last House on The Left – A remake that works! While it was not a masterful film it was a nice sick twisted film filled with murder, rape and revenge. The acting was good for a Hollywood Grindhouse film and the pace of the film seemed to chug along at a good pace. Plus like this twist ending a lot!




8.) Hulk vs. – The Green Skin monster is back in this animated film that has him fighting with Thor and Wolverine in two short films. While the Wolverine one was just all right it was packed with other characters like Deadpool, Lady Deathstrike, Sabertooth and Omega Red. The vs. Thor is the better of the two and has an epic feel when the green skin goliath tangles with the god of thunder.






9.) The Hills Run Red – A nice under the radar film that is about a young man looking for a lost horror film that was said to be the most shocking over the top flicks ever made. What he finds it a one way ticket to the film that never ends, The Hills do indeed run red! Nice twisted film with a cool killer and some great gore.





10.) Inglorious Bastards – Not a fan of Tarantino’s work for the most part he’s pretty hit or miss with me but this Word War II spaghetti western was just the right mix of witty dialogue, over the top action and drama to make it one fun watch. Brad Pitt is a little silly in this one and at times his acting is down right bad, but looking at the film I think it’s meant to be that way.





11.) Sick Girl – This was a film that my pal Jerry from Synapse talked me into getting and I really liked it! It’s about a young girl who is mentally unstable and who gets her rage out by killing and torturing people in her barn. It’s a cool independent film that has heart and a solid script. If you like sick films with twisted plots then check this one out.





Films I seen in 09

Drag Me To Hell, Superman Batman Public Enemies, Tyson, Street Fighter The Legend of Chun-Li, I Love You Man, Quiet Nights of Blood And Pain, Victor Juliet’s Director Cut, Martyrs, Bride Wars, Paul Blart Mall Cop, The Unborn,
MaskHead, Underworld Rise of The Lycans, Haunting in Connecticut, Clive Barker’s Book of Blood, GI Joe The Rise of Cobra, Taintlight, Green Lantern First Flight, Jennifer’s Body, Paranormal Activity, Bruno, Jeff Hardy.. My Life My Rules, Macho Madness The Randy Savage Collection, Hulk Hogan Unleashed,
Jeff Jarrett King Of The Mountain, Matt and Bruce’s First Time


WORST


1.) Friday The 13th – A heartless piece of trash that once again Michael Bay and his team of hacks pooped out for the teen audience. It’s so lame that at times it seems as if they just did another remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and added Jason in for Leatherface! Wasted $10.75 in the theatre to see this crap.





2.) Halloween II – What was Rob Zombie thinking when he wrote this terrible film that ruined the franchise. Terrible script, some bad acting and his wife with a white horse is some of the reasons this film blew. Sad indeed for my favorite horror franchise to be treated like this. The only plus side is that it has my girl Danielle Harris in it, who I have been a fan of for a long time.





3.) Dragonball Evolution – What a bad movie with bottom of the barrel effects and a piss poor story line and no real direction. This is a Golden Turkey film that should be on MSTK 3000 if they decide to re-launch.





4.) Transformers 2 Revenge of the Fallen – A plot that is so half assed it has more holes then a chunk of Swiss Cheese. This is the prime reason people need to stop seeing Bay’s “epic” effect films that are just terrible. A soulless film with no heart, and the key reason why Platinum Dunes needs to stop screwing up 80’s cartoons.




5.) Wrong Turn 3 – Terrible! I was a fan of both part one and two, but this one seems to have had a budget they wasted cause half way through the effects look like a backyard film that a highschool student made. It had an all right story just not well put together at all, very disappointed in this one!








6.) Feast III – What the fuck was this films ending about? It’s as if the filmmakers think they made some sly joke but really all it did was piss of fans who have followed this series. It was fun and wild up till the giant fucking robot. Very lame guys next time do better!

CGI Claws do not amuse

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOVERINE (2009)
D. GAVIN HOOD
20th Century fuck, uh I mean, FOX
2.35:1

Well the summer movie season has officially begun and I.Q. points could be felt dropping exponentially in the theater even before this movie began to roll. i could literally smell burning brain tissue from synapses dying while the abominable trailer for flickered on screen and the audience sat in raptures silence until the first of at least three dozen explosions appeared. Some how the crushing feeling of disappointment I felt while walking out of TRANSFORMERS 2X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE was not felt by the rest of these folks I bet. I'm sure they were more than happy with the mush brained twaddle they had just witnessed. I on the other hand would have liked something more. A lot more.

The movie starts off really strong with our hero as a little boy. A sickly little dude who witnesses a confusing mess of a situation where his adoptive dad is killed by his friend's father, who turns out to be his biological father. In the midst of it all the kid's anger is triggered and bony claws jet out of his hands and he kills the dude. He and his friend, now his brother (who is also a mutant) run into the Forrest away from the prying eyes of normal folks. Cut to then as adults and them fighting in the Civil war, then the First World War, and World War two and then Vietnam. These war sequences are the opening credits and serve to show how the two of them are basically indestructible and somehow immortal. It also shows how his his brother Victor Creed (Liev Shreiber who is very miscast, though tries really hard) aka Sabertooth has grown into loving the taste of blood and violence while James aka Logan and soon to be Wolverine has become a little more laid back and is the only one who can reign his brother in. They both end up killing some fellow soldiers are court marshaled and executed.

But they do not die and are recruited to work for a secret black ops team that is going around the world tracking "items of importance" such as special meteor fragments. But when Logan stops a Mai Lai style massacre and simply walks away (what?!) the team is abandoned and we cut to six years later with him now living in the woods of Canada with a beautiful woman, working as a lumberjack.

These domestic scenes are actually some of the films best moments, especially when he awakes from a nightmare with his claws fully ejected to find his girl already awake, completely calm, simply asking him if it was dreams about the wars again. When she asks him which one, he replies "All of them". he then notices that she is cut on her arm and she dismisses it as no big deal. it is a nice moment that shows what it would be like to live the life of Wolverine, one of the few humanizing moments the character gets. When I want to see an "origin" story, this is the kind of stuff I want to see.

But clearly the studio heads at fox don't agree because the movie is literally stuffed to gills with side characters. So many that it becomes hard to keep track of who they are and what their mutant abilities do. The black ops team Wolverine works for is entirely made up of mutants and just that alone would have made for an interesting movie. But that storyline gets abandoned after about five minutes. It really only exists to introduce us to Ryan Reynolds DeadPool character so they can spin him off into his own movie (which was just green lit as I write this).

Once the movie gets moving with Sabertooth, ugh sorry Victor, killing Logan's girl and tearing through the landscape it should just become a straight ahead revenge tale. But then it goes completely wrong and introduces the "weapon X" program, which has been seen in the other X-Men movies. The stuff where he is implanted with Adamantium into his bones as to become completely indestructible and now has metal claws. With this comes a whole new set of plot twists, new characters, more mutants, old mutants, characters from the other X-Men films, but younger and a plot that keeps folding in on itself just for the sake of doing so. Clearly this was written by committee where people sat around a table and went "Oooo I like that character, put him in!" "I think Wolverine should rescue the characters from the other films, lets do that!" and it is all stewed together with no cohesiveness at all. what you end up with is plot threads that dangle, revisionist history from the other films that doesn't match and the sense of mystery from the character being completely whipped away. I mean even Victor is never called Sabertooth in an attempt to fool the audience in to never noticing that he is the same character from the first X-men movie that we've already seen. The movie is filled with crap like this.

Unfortunately for Hugh Jackman his is completely game for the character doing his best with material that is beneath him and the character as well. More often than not when he is onscreen he almost saves this mess. the scenery (mostly shot in Australia) is gorgeous and the fight scenes are really well handled, save for the climactic battle which is horrible and feels like a video game outtake.

Which leads to another problem, the special effects. for a movie whose budget was nearly $200,000,000 this has some of the worse special effects I've seen in a major motion picture. the big set pieces are fine, but the incidental stuff like wolverine's claws or even people driving in cars, look like shit. Really embarrassing at the end of the day.

Now my comic book loving friends hated this movie even more than I did, because they said it screwed up not only the origins of Wolverine's character, but got wrong just about every detail of all the new characters they introduced as well. I can't comment on that, as I don't read the comics. All I know is that the script is a mess, totally dramatically unsound, the movie's best moments are either fight scenes, or the rare quiet aside, neither of which are enough to save it from total mediocrity.