Meet the Spartans

0 Stars

You know what's sad? Half these jokes in Meet the Spartans were used in my seventh grade filmmaking stage. So does that mean I could have had the #1 film in America at the age of twelve? Yes, Meet the Spartans, another tired spoof about pop culture is #1 again with 18.5$ million.

What's even sadder is that the cast & crew aren't even trying, by recycling jokes that are sixth months past its mediocre stage of reference. Meet the Spartans is the equivalent of 300 on the cover of Star Magazine meaning that no one really gives a rat's ass about you're story. Leave the freaking film alone.

Note: If you haven't seen 300 and you're really want to see this (please e-mail with reasons so I can understand why the film was made) then you are going to have no idea what's going on. If you have seen 300 and didn't like it, then you will hate the films concept. And if you have seen 300 and loved it, you will be tortured with its dreadful remorse of its joke. So my point again, there will be no satisfying outcome for any viewer.

Here is Meet the Spartans in a nutshell: it's everything you hate about American society and everything you hate about television. Then they charge you ten bucks to see it.

Rambo

**1/2 Stars

The theory that seeing a movie in a theater can make it a better experience is absolutely true when seeing the fourth installment of the Rambo franchise. Not only did I get to see one of the most ridiculous action films of this decade, I got to witness the most ridiculous, hilarious, and unforgettable trailer in recent memory. I won't tell you the title because that is half the fun but to witness it, click here.

Ok, back to Rambo. Now Sylvester Stallone is in his sixties and is in better shape than half the people my age. It is true he has taken steroids to prepare himself for the role. But hey, the guy is not an athlete in any major sport and he has to look jacked to pull of this tough-guy persona. So I say, why the hell not? Let the guy do his thing.

For the record, the film itself is quite terrible. The plot is weak, the acting is sub-par, and the torture in this film is horribly disturbing. But Stallone knows his audience. An action junkie is looking for ninety minutes of pure adrenaline, loaded with the most violent kills a film has to offer. So did I have a good time? Sure. Can I recommend it? Well, I won't discourage you from seeing it, but I can't really make you see this film unless you are simply a Rambo action junkie.

Vietnam vet John Rambo has been secluded from the outside world for decades. He lives quietly in Thailand after his past ordeals with his old Colonel Samuel Trautman (played by Richard Crenna in the first three films, he is absent here) and is trying to forget the things he has done. Violence always seems to come back to John no matter what situation he gets in. When a Christian group from America come to try and help the refugees of the territory of Burma, they ask Rambo to guide them to their village. Known as the Karen people, they have been tortured by the Burmese military and struggle just to survive every day. Rambo excepts the job to take them by boat to the land.

So when the missionaries arrive at the village, they themselves are captured and a group of American soldiers (who just happen to be close enough to the area in time to save them) go on a rescue mission and they need John Rambo to take them. From there, the action takes over and your brain goes right out the window.

It takes skill to create these slick action sequences. In fact, the best part of the movie has almost no violence. When the Americans and Rambo arrive at the camp, their entrance is at night, as they secretly sway through the guards to those captured. The scene is taut and tightly put together. But once they are rescued, Stallone goes for the over-the-top violence where when someone is shot by a bullet, they are forcefully flown into the air with their carcass spread all over the screen. A treat for the eyes of a fourteen year old and a death wish for everyone who has a fourteen year-old child.

Untraceable

** Stars

Untraceable is the definition of hypocrisy on the front page of Hypocrisy For Dummies (If there really is a book called that, you can sue me for copyright infringement). The message Untraceable tries to tell us is that our internet world is filled with disturbing psychos who are entertained by torture porn. Let's bring back Danny Glover from my Shooter review...His answer would be, really?

So where does the hypocrisy lie in all this? Well Untraceable wants to help send a message to viewers that you should be careful about the internet and who’s out there. So the first thing it does is it creates a site that shows a human being killed based on the number of hits it receives. It graphically shows a victim being tortured numerous times in ways that would make Water-Torture look like a slip-n-slide. I guess it's acceptable to make a movie to show the evidence and then play with the carcasses.

The cast deserves better material than this. Diane Lane turns in a solid paycheck playing Jennifer Marsh, a secret service agent caught up in an internet cat-and-mouse game with a killer who starts an internet site tapping into the dark fetishes of perverted people (which apparently is torture-porn). The killer starts a site where people are tortured and killed live on the site killwithme.com for the whole world to see. The catch? The more that log on to the site, the faster the victim dies. In some scenes, Untraceable has the counter on the site splurging past twenty-five million people and counting. That means twenty-five times the state I'm from (New Hampshire) is getting off to this site. Look, I understand what the film is trying to say, but it doesn't need to rub it in my face.

When the film isn't on the internet, it has its chance to be an intelligent thriller. Some scenes are tightly put together, especially with the relationship between Marsh and her co-worker Griffin Dowd, played by the underrated Colin Hanks (when is this guy going to get his big break?) Dowd is set up as a cliche, with his inability to get girls and meets girls online. But the film actually has an ironic twist with his character when the killer finds out who Marsh and Dowd are, but it only comes out to another scene of torture porn. I will give you a synopsis of what they use for torture porn in one sentence: Someone gets soaked in a pool of battery acid and you slowly watch him dissolve into a sulfuric being. It's just lovely. So with the help of Detective Eric Box (Billy Burke), Dowd, and the rest of her FBI team, Marsh tries to stop this killer before he hurts the people she loves.

The film had its chances to scare the audience, but it falls back on graphic violence. The thought of something happening is much scarier than actually showing it to us because the imagination of the brain is uncontrollable. If this is the kind of material people want on the internet, then I guess my site will never become popular.

Cloverfield

*** Stars

It is so refreshing to see a movie event in January. The hype of J.J Abrams 1-18-08 project was absolutely astounding, with its brilliant trailer and the YouTube crowd flocking about sites trying to figure out what the hell is attacking New York City. And if you think seeing the film is the answer, you may be surprised to see that you won't get it. I've seen it twice and I still have no idea what Cloverfield means, but thats the smarts of it. It is just footage of something that would happen if our society was attacked by something. This is The Blair Witch Project and Godzilla, wrapped up and sold on YouTube. I was pulled in.

It's kind of a groundbreaking approach to moviemaking. Take all unknown actors, throw them in a setting every young adult knows (boozing, relationship issues, and parties) and then get attacked by a monster, all shot from a home video. All the actors give appropriately forgettable performances, as anyone would on a home-video. The production cost was only $25 million, which is amazing because it all looks so real. It grossed $46 million in its first weekend and has given audiences hope that theres more to January films then One Missed Call.


So what does the word Cloverfield mean? Well the film begins with a military code named CLOVERFIELD that shows the footage of what happened that night. Director Matt Reeves and Producer J.J Abrams won't explain the significance, which makes their marketing campaign brilliant. The tagline could have been, "Who wants to see what would happen to you if this happened?"...with the statue of liberty missing its head. The film makes us believe that it could happen to anyone and it pulls that off very well.

Ok, so there is a reason why haven't mentioned any plot points yet in my review. The reason is because there is no plot. No characters are really introduced and there is no structure towards a story. Try not to read to much into it because there's really nothing to read. It's a movie for those who like to look at the pictures and ignore the article. The films only foundation is a group of people who go to a party, get drunk, and then run away from a monster. Are they just hallucinating? Do they think this is a joke? Are they going to wake up with a hangover and pretend that it was just another wild night? Does the rest of the world survive? Do they ever kill the monster? Is the president safe? Where did this THING come from? These questions prove the film did its job. It's not a movie, only an experience. I only wished they kept the title 1-18-08, and then have the event occur on 1-18-08, which would have made it the first film title to be named after its release date and for it to ironically occur in real time.