jimnshay Reviews

Big Ass Spider! (2013)

B Plus

[7/10 · 28 October 2014]

"Big Ass Spider" is a reasonably entertaining B-Movie that neither takes itself too seriously nor insults your intelligence (except with your permission). If you like this kind of comedy/horror/monster movie at all, you'll enjoy yourself here. It's not Shakespeare; then again, that's not what it said on the box. And you opened it anyway.

You could compare it to a Syfy original; it's in that genre. But it's better than all than about three of them, and that's including "Sharknado." Not like BAS is genius, but Syfy movies are… not good.

It does what a B is supposed to do: entertain, divert, scare a little, clown around. Decent job. A perfect NetFlix weeknight movie; even Saturday night, if you're not doing anything.

Khumba (2013)

DIFFERENT Fun for the Whole Family

[7/10 · 17 September 2014]

Yes, yes, another talking-wild-animal film, complete with journey of discover for the poor half- striped zebra who doesn't fit it. But I found it to be a first-class effort of its type. Oh, yes, it does slow down a bit in the middle; they could have tightened it up quite a lot.

But some of the animated characters were quite clever, humorous, or both. And the cultural memes and stories utilized in the plot, being out of South Africa, were significantly different than the approach that say, Disney or Dreamworks might have taken.

Your kids will enjoy it. And if you appreciate animation, you'll enjoy a fresh approach to a familiar type of animated features.

I Know That Voice (2013)

Overlong Movie, But Great Two-Part Miniseries

[17 September 2014]

John DiMaggio and his friends tell the story of voice acting, and nobody tells a story better than people who do funny voices. It's raucous, wild, silly, and honest. About 45 minutes in you've heard about the beginning of voice acting in cartoons and all the principals have told you how they got into the business and what it means to them. It's a complete experience, a great ride, and you're well and truly satiated. And a little exhausted by all the high-energy emoting.

But there' was still another 45 minutes to go. What, I asked, could the next 45 minutes possibly be about?

Well, actually, it's about the business of cartoon voice-overs: how you get work, what it's like to need work and the insecurity of the business, what a recording session is like, what their agents do for them, how they work with directors, and the different kinds of work that they do. The part about doing voice-overs for video games was a scream. But it was all good.

Taken all in a piece, it's too much. So here's my suggestion; especially doable if you see this on Netflix. At 45 minutes, stop the movie; you've seen Part 1. Go do something else. The next day, see the rest of the movie -- Part 2. You'll enjoy the two halves immensely -- much better than the whole. That's what I did, and I whole-heartedly recommend the movie, when watched this way.

The Fabulous Ice Age (2013)

A Forty-Year-long Party

[17 September 2014]

When I was a kid -- and I'm old -- big ice-skating shows used to barnstorm through my metro area every year: Ice Capades, Holiday on Ice, Ice Follies. I never went, and I never knew what they were like. But this movie shows you: huge, crazy spectacles of massed skaters in brilliant costumes, special effects, inspired ice-dancing. It was like a two-hour production number from one of those crazy MGM musicals from the '40s -- only done live. On ice.

Kids who were good skaters, and wanted to badly enough, barnstormed the world with these companies, performing in South America, Europe, Mexico, even Russia. What was it like to be one of these kids? That's what the movie tells you, through interviews with people who were there and who describe their time as a twenty- or thirty-year party with their best friends.

I can't recommend this movie highly enough. It describes a form of pop culture that was once as huge as rock concerts and is now almost forgotten. And it makes you sorry the big shows are gone, while it describes why they had to go. All in all, a great trip.

Manhattan (2014–2015)

From a time when "computers" were people with adding machines

[8/10 · 30 July 2014]

I've read "109 East Palace," a very good book about life in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, and so far it seems that the producers of "Manhattan" have done their homework. Except that Oppenheimer was referred to as "Oppie" by many who were familiar with him.

This is obviously a fictionalized account of the development of the bomb; I doubt you'll see a "real" person portrayed except Oppenheimer -- and maybe Dorothy his trusted assistant. Seventy years later, the whole affair is still too politically charged to do a "real" docudrama. It might come out that the real troublemaker at Los Alamos, the guy who guided atomic weapons development from the '50s on -- after Oppenheimer had been gotten rid of -- was a raving jerk and backstabber. Can't have that.

But the show captures the urgency and the chaos rather well, and the details -- the human "computers," for example, were good and fun. The characters were attention-grabbing enough. I enjoyed it. We'll see if they can carry it through for 12 episodes -- or if 12 episodes of non-stop urgency and intensity are too much.

Update: November 2014. I like this show even better than I did at the start. You who say it became tedious: yes, for awhile it threatened to lose itself in subplots. But the last three episodes roared toward a conclusion that, if the show had not been renewed, would have been the capstone of an entirely complete and satisfying work of fiction.

In many ways, this season has been Frank's journey to answer this question: what things can a good man do, or not do, in the name of good?

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)

Satirizes low-brow underdog comedies, while being a pretty good one

[8/10 · 5 July 2004]

It's low-brow fun that's self-aware; it does what it does, and at the same time makes fun of the conventions of underdog comedies, and of a lot of other things -- sports, sports TV, the fitness craze, and so on.

A lot of the crude jokes are actually pretty smart: they get laughs not just by being crude, but by being unexpected. This movie didn't change my life, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. I didn't laugh helplessly, but I did laugh out loud a number of times.

The actors were good enough: Rip Torn is always fun, Ben Stiller reminded me of all the EST-addled people I knew back in the '70s and '80s. I thought his final fate was a little cruder than crude, even for a movie like this. But you'll only find out what happens to him if you stay until the end of the credits.

10.5 (2004)

So bad, it's good (a few spoilers)

[2/10 · 7 May 2004]

This movie is as bad as nearly everybody says it is, but that's what I enjoyed. Just about every line that Beau Bridges had to say as president was so laughable that it was actually funny. As were the special effects in the scene where the earth swallowed the train. Who was their special effects team for that -- Lionel?

As to where all those no-name actors came from -- according to the credits, the movie was largely shot in low-overhead British Columbia, and so probably most of the secondary actors were Canadian as well. We recognized one of the president's advisers as a guest star on the TV series Stargate, which films in Vancouver.