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STFU_Donny
1. Blue Velvet
2. Memento
3. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
4. Run Lola Run
5. The Big Lebowski
6. Snatch.
7. Fight Club
8. Following
9. Rear Window
10. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
The Spirit (2008)
All of the style of Sin City, but none of the soul
Sin City, it ain't. I saw this with people who said they liked it (they may or may not have been drinking), and that was accompanied by the disclaimer "... so bad, it's good." Just because it can be funny to watch something fail in it's own ineptness doesn't necessarily make it good.
The plot (MINOR SPOILERS): A cop (Gabriel Macht) comes back from beyond the grave as The (womanizing) Spirit. Due to a mix-up, his voluptuous childhood ex-girlfriend, Sand Saref (Eva Mendes), and the mysterious, make-up wearing Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) wind up with wrong trunks. The trunk that The Octopus wants contains the blood of Heracles (because it will turn him into a God), and the trunk that Sand Saref wants contains Jason's Golden Fleece (because (and I am not making this up, this is the given reason in the movie) it's shiny). The Spirit is running around, trying to figure out what is going on, and seducing women as he goes along. (/MINOR SPOILERS)
Everything comes back to Frank Miller, the director, and that's just where the problem lies. He's really not a director; he's a visual stylist. He has a terrible sense of timing, from line delivery to the puns of poorly written jokes. The performances he yields from his actors makes this arguably the most overacted movie of the year... Come to think of it, this is also probably the most sexist movie of the year, with women being easily manipulated on the drop of a dime and only being interested in lavish, material things, never mind the fact that they are just being used for eye candy. The only thing this movie really has going for it is that is breathtaking to look at in parts.
Has this year's biggest WTF moment when Samuel L. Jackson comes out dressed like a Nazi for no apparent reason.
Shoot 'Em Up (2007)
Shoot 'Em Up: The most fun I have had in a movie theater since Grindhouse
I had been looking forward to this movie for months, so walking in, I had somewhat high expectations. Walking out, I felt very satisfied and that I had gotten more than my money's worth.
You are going to be hard-pressed to find a movie more over the top than Shoot 'Em Up. What Michael Davis does here is take every action movie cliché (i.e. firing two guns while jumping through the air, shooting guns out of speeding cars, etc.) and takes it to a whole new level entirely. It works namely because the violence here is just so creative. Sure, it defies all logic most of the time, but I was laughing and having a rip-roaring time throughout.
Clive Owen is perfectly cast as the carrot-chomping, gun-toting smart aleck hero and has no shortage of cheesy puns (that score big laughs). The rest of the cast does well, but really, it's Clive's show.
The "plot" is pretty much non-existent other than about a half dozen scenes of slightly forced dialogue. The purpose behind these scenes is more to give the audience a couple of minutes to catch it's collective breath between action scenes than it is to develop an actual story. And really, if you went to this movie expecting an in-depth character drama, you picked the wrong film.
At a little under an hour and a half, Shoot 'Em Up successfully delivers a perfect dosage of action, guns and puns without overstaying it's welcome. I'll be sure to see it at least a couple more times while it is still in theaters.
Plus, it has Mötley Crüe's, "Kickstart my Heart". What more could you ask for?