Change Your Image
joshcooley79
Reviews
The Conjuring (2013)
Why so Christian?
This is essentially a SUUUUUPER Christian remake of Poltergeist, with a thinly veiled anti-abortion message. Yeah, it has some creepy moments and for a while it even seems relatively restrained, but it eventually devolves into the same old crap that you always see in this type of formulaic horror movie. There are many, many things that are so typical that it feels like you're watching a parody of a horror movie; moments that felt as if I'd somehow stumbled into an awful Scary Movie sequel. And then it all falls apart when it becomes so terribly, unashamedly Christian... Its stance isn't even as nebulous as the pseudo-New Agey stuff in Poltergeist (which was a very light touch compared to the heavy handedness here), and even literally spells it out for the audience that both the devil and god exist. Hooey! So if you don't mind going to see a schlocky horror movie--where there is never even any real danger--and don't mind that icky feeling that you've just dropped your money into a religious propaganda machine's offering plate, then... well, you probably deserve this ultimately anticlimactic, unsatisfying, preachy tripe.
The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
Pointless
This isn't the worst movie ever made, but it certainly lacks... well, anything of value. It all just meanders around, always making you think that something is about to happen, but nothing ever does. In many ways it's very similar to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but it feels twice as long and is even less entertaining. There's a terribly weak MacGuffin that sets everything into motion (or at least the appearance of motion), then a young man goes chasing after it for little reason other than curiosity, then he partners up with a salty older man whose key characteristic is that he's a hopeless drunkard (a simple switch of focus from older male lead to younger). Oh, and there's a terrible, hopelessly mean baddie... who does what villains do. There are several instances of Indiana Jones-like chase scenes and blah, blah, blah... It just gets bogged down in so much, "been there, done that" territory, all the while spinning and whipping you around during long, increasingly boring attempts at "set pieces" where the camera seems to never stop flipping and turning and careening in and out of bubbles or reflections in swords or puddles and drawing faaaaar too much attention to each transition between nearly every shot! So not only is there nothing going on, there is SO MUCH nothing going on that it's difficult not to throw your 3D glasses to the floor and stomp out only an hour into the whole mess... which is precisely what we did (well, it may have been an hour and 15 minutes into it). Oh, and the last straw was really the fact that the MacGuffin is simply sunken treasure... Give me a break! There MUST be more interesting things to search for in this world besides freaking sunken treasure!!! Sure, it may have turned out to be something a bit more interesting, but after an hour and however long, it was too painful to imagine sitting through another 30 or so minutes of the blandest bit of flashy mediocrity I've seen in ages.
Paranormal Activity (2007)
Paranormal Activity sucks balls.
Take the Blair Witch Project, add in a little Exorcist, shake it around in a paper sack with equal parts bad MTV reality show and bad TLC haunting show and voilà! ... crrrrrrap. Pointless, lazy crap.
Why must reviews now be at least 10 lines long?
That review says it all, but okay... it's also bad because of the bland, boring characters that you WISH would just die already and stop subjecting you to their vain idiocy and preteen humor. The camera work will make you a little nauseous, but not nearly as much as the wasted existences of characters like those.
There's one thing to be said for suspense, but at least give your audience something interesting to pay attention to while you're building it up! Truly sadistic film-making.
Long enough, IMDb?
Merlin by Isaac Albéniz (2004)
A relevant masterpiece.
This was evidently the last work by Isaac Albeniz, and he certainly went out with a bang! Merlin re-imagines its classic characters into a more surreal and moral world than you might be accustomed to... and yet it is more realistic in its portrayal of the simultaneous war and communion between religious mysticism and government and the doubling of these within both groups that further doubles out and down the pecking order until it reaches the lowest levels of society. In essence, it says what we've all known for quite some time; a ruler's subjects mirror him. For the rest, you will have to experience this wonderful gem for yourself. Enjoy!
The Dark Knight (2008)
Pure Propaganda
Why The Dark Knight sucks:
It is basically akin to Triumph of the Will; pure propaganda. Batman = George W. Bush (or any shady, uber-rich government official). As Bruce Wayne, he must portray himself as a spoiled, bumbling fool, who boozes and womanizes and is just a big walking joke. As Batman, he can use any kind of destructive method to take down the bad guy (in this case, the Joker is often called a terrorist), including using billions of dollars of Wayne Enterprises money to secretly implant 3D-sonar-imaging devices into a wave of new cell phones that flood the market and consequently give him the ability to create a 3D map of the city that can locate and track anyone. His closest friends, who know his secret identity, think this tracking map is unethical, but he justifies it by saying that he must use any means necessary to take this one down. Does any of this sound familiar?
Besides all of this, the movie feels like that 15-minute montage of super-heroic feats from every FIRST superhero movie... sssssssssttttttttttrrrrrrrreeeeeeettttttccccchhhhhheeeeedddddd ooooouuuuuutttttt to 2 1/2 hours! It starts out too talky with a bunch of mob bosses (among them Eric Roberts) wriggling out from under D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) in court and throws a few unnecessary story lines up in the air (that don't get resolved until much later... and poorly at that), then strings together action set-pieces (that all seem like leftovers from a Die Hard movie) for the next 2 hours, then finally wraps it up with characteristically cheesy "the fight will continue" dialogue that every superhero movie ends with.
So it's boring, PLUS it's poorly done apart from that.
SAVE YOUR MONEY!