Javin Reviews

Radioflash (2019)

What complete dross.

[1/10 · 30 November 2019]

This movie was just utterly frustrating to sit through. Something that should have been so easy to get right (post-EMP world) just somehow managed to actively get EVERYTHING wrong.

Spoilers follow.

The movie opens with the main protagonist, a teenage girl, drowning" in a strange room trying to figure out a puzzle with the numerous telephones on the wall as the room fills with water. Ultimately, this turns out to be a VR video game. The girl is a game programmer who is working on her own video game, which is "coming along" as she tells her dad. This plot line is then dropped and literally never mentioned again.

What appears to be a magical EMP fries the electrical grid while leaving laptops, cell phones, and cars functional. At this point, you think you're going to be treated to a movie about the post apocalyptic story, exploring the intricacies of life without electricity.

Well too bad, Nancy, the entire plot will ignore the fact that literally in less than 24 hours, people are losing their minds, but rather this story is going to pivot into West Virginia "Deliverance" for no particular reason.

And that's it. That's the movie. From watching the main protagonist make an AC radio work by plugging it up to a DC battery, to watching her make exactly zero attempt to escape when loosely tied up for days, the entire show was just terrible. We kept expecting the "twist" to be that she was in a video game that she was going to wake up from since every character in the movie made all the worst decisions until the credits rolled rather abruptly.

Which was a good thing. The best part of the movie was that it was over.

The Ridiculous 6 (2015)

It's precisely what you should expect from a Happy Madison production.

[10/10 · 18 December 2015]

Warning: A few minor spoilers.

Happy Madison started moving into the "feel good" family films with Mr. Deeds, Click, and the like, but has gone back to its roots with "The Ridiculous 6". From the fight in the opening scene you immediately know that this movie is not going to take itself seriously.

It wasn't what I would consider some of Adam Sandler's "best work" but it's up there with Waterboy in my book, and I'd watch it again. Which is odd, because the campy/goofy stuff was a little heavy handed in the beginning, and I even told my wife I'd be okay if she wanted to turn it off. She said we had to muscle through it to see Taylor Lautner's character (she was a huge fan of him as Jacob in Twilight).

And Oh My God am I glad we did. From the moment he enters the scene, Lautner shows a side of him that is simultaneously hilarious and cringe-worthy. Time and time again he had some of the best one-liners and there's one scene (no, not the Burro scene) where I actually guffawed out loud, and we even had to rewind it to watch again after finishing the movie. You'll know it when you see it.

It was awesome seeing this side of him, and realizing what a range he has as an actor. After this performance, I sincerely hope that Lautner becomes a regular part of the Happy Madison family.

Almost as surprising was Jorge Garcia's character ("Hurley" from Lost). I almost didn't recognize him, and he shows his chops as a comic actor with only a single intelligible word in the entire movie.

Don't come into this looking for a deep plot line, or anything other than what you would expect from a campy Happy Madison production. Think more "Little Nicky" and less "Grandma's Boy".

Still a great watch, if only to see Lautner's character with your wife. Especially if she loved Twilight.

Funny People (2009)

Don't trust the rating...

[1/10 · 3 December 2009]

Thus far, 5,000 people have voted this movie as a 9 or 10 star rating. There's really, honestly only one explanation for this: These people were associated with this movie and have something to gain by its being rated high enough to dupe people into buying it.

For a movie that was reviewed as being "Uproariously Funny" and "Hilarious" that has a cast of comedians, is located in the comedy section, and is called "Funny People" one would expect something along the lines of, oh, I don't know, a comedy.

Instead what you get is a two and a half hour long, poorly directed drama about a man who finds out he has a rare form of leukemia, has a 92% chance of dying, so decides to go on a last stand-up comedy tour but has lost his "funny." So he hires an aspiring stand-up comedian to do his writing for him.

It was as if they were trying very, very hard to show just how un-funny starting comedians were. In the scenes where some stand-up was seen, this would have been the opportune time to inject some comedy into this otherwise depressing and pointless movie. Instead, you get bad jokes, vulgar jokes, and groaners.

So the main character (George Simmons) begins talking to his (now married with two children) ex-girlfriend who was the "love of his life" (that left him because he cheated on her). Later discovering that he has miraculously beaten the odds, and is in fact getting better, the "love of his life" decides she will leave her husband, keeping the two children, and live with George. Ultimately, having already cheated on her husband and slept with George, she decides that he hasn't really changed all that much, and no lessons are learned by either party. She goes back to her husband attempting to lie about having slept with him. Yes... Really... This is the 2.5 hour plot.

The closest thing to "funny" in this movie was a very short fight scene between her husband and George that happens at about 2 hours and 15 minutes into the movie. There was also a ton of cameos of various comedians, and on all parts, they either failed to even have dialog, or their dialog was utterly pointless, and non-humorous. In fact, the funniest cameo in the whole movie came from a 10 second bit with Eminem. That should tell you something.

This movie would have deserved a 5 if they had cut out some of the completely undeveloped sub-plots, some of the inane, and incredibly long dialog, and made it a decent 1 hour, to 1.5 hour movie. However, after sitting through 2.5 hours of this move in the hopes that SOMETHING would climax and make me feel like it wasn't a complete waste, by the end, I was left feeling that this was yet another 2.5 hours of my life I would never get back.

To reiterate, there was just no comedy in the movie. Even the humor you see in the trailers, when actually put into context with the actual movie, still ends up being depressing.

The "40 Year Old Virgin" was brilliant, and I loved it. Don't let the fact that the same director was involved in this crap-storm fool you into buying it. If you must see it, rent it, or better still, con a friend into renting it so you at least won't be out the money.

-Javin

Eight Crazy Nights (2002)

Obviously, many people missed the point completely.

[10/10 · 24 November 2007]

If you're not an Adam Sandler fan, you will not like this movie. Period. If you claim to be a fan because you like one or two of his movies, don't bother. If you've followed his career since Saturday Night Live, and have always been a fan, you will absolutely love this movie.

This movie is classic Sandler. His first animated feature, Adam was obviously having a lot of fun with this one and the humor is right along the lines of Happy Gilmore, and Billy Madison, the very movies that rocketed Adam Sandler into the success he is today.

If you can see the humor in a midget seizing while saying, "This is the happiest day of my life," deer laughing so hard poop shoots out their backsides, and classic Adam Sandler songs like those he got his start with (if you know and love "Lunch Lady Land") this movie is for you.

This movie is chocked full of one-liners, and senseless humor that is 100% Adam Sandler, and absolutely hilarious. There's surprisingly a plot hidden in there that's actually interesting enough to get you involved, but watch it for the classic Sandler fun.

If you like classic Sandler, I can't recommend this movie enough.

The Devil's Rejects (2005)

Zombie is completely non-dynamic.

[1/10 · 11 April 2007]

Absolutely no character development. Poor acting by Zombie's wife. Completely predictable scenes that never manage to mesh together into a plot. This movie, quite simply, was terrible. A never ending excuse to show nudity, and gore for the sake of gore, it's quite obvious what caliber of person actually voted this one high. It's truly shocking that this movie has been voted higher than a 3, but it goes to show just how far our society as a whole has degraded.

I'll never waste another minute on anything else made by Rob Cummings.

*** Spoilers Below ***

Basic plot is a family of 5 are serial killers. The dad's apparently a clown. Literally. No explanation, no development of character. They just have managed to kill an entire warehouse full of people without anyone being the wiser. Mom gets nabbed by the cops during a shootout, and one of the brothers gets killed. Others escape due to the cliché'd ineptitude of the cops.

From there, innocent people are killed, sliced up, dismembered as the family goes on the run, with no real explanation of what their final goal or destination is. The majority of the women in the movie (alive or dead) are shown fully naked at some point. Perhaps between the gore and the nudity, it's the 14 year olds giving the movie such a high rank.

At any rate, the family is just off running around, getting off on killing, torturing, and molesting the innocent. For kicks, Rob Cummings gives his wife tons of pointless, useless dialog (which consists of about 25% of the words being F***) and takes absolutely *EVERY* opportunity to show her butt, even creating some opportunities when there weren't any.

Finally, a completely undeveloped "bad-guy" cop character quits his job to go after them "his own way," ending in an unbelievably predictable and cliché'd gunfight. Again, I really can't fathom how this movie has the rating it does. It's just... BAD.

Honestly, if you have ANY desire to see this trash, wait for it to come out on DVD, or better yet, borrow it from a friend and save your money. You'll already be disappointed at wasting your time.

Dracula 3000 (2004)

1:20 of your life that you'll never get back.

[1/10 · 27 January 2005]

First, let me say that I am SO incredibly glad that I did not actually pay to see this nightmarishly bad film. My boss brought it in to work, and we watched it here. Seriously, in all honesty, I would've rather have been working. At the end, he even said "I'm so sorry. I'm going to have to make up for that one." First, you've got Casper Van Dien playing a descendant of Van Helsing. Now, for anyone that knows ANYTHING about the history of Dracula, you would already be offended. This guy is apparently making a career out of trying to come up with the absolute worst movie record of all time, and he's doing pretty good. Starting with Starship Troopers, he's been on a pretty steady downward spiral (and you wouldn't have thought that he'd have all that far to go from there.) But this one HAS to be rock bottom. I swear I've seen independent films that were FAR better.

So let's look at the major parts of the movie: Plot - Dracula is actually from a PLANET called "Transylvania" that is filled with vampires. As his planet was dying, had the foresight to have a bunch of coffins shipped off his planet, but then killed everyone crewing the ship just for the heck of it, and has been floating around in space ever since. 1000 years in the future, this crew finds the ship, and that's where we begin the movie. Anyone else thinking "WTF?" Cast - Just look at the list. Any movie with "Coolio" highly billed pretty much speaks for itself. It's as if they specifically put a bid out for whatever actors would take the lowest bid in Hollywood. If they spent more than $3000 on the entire cast, I'd be offended. And the acting shows that you get what you pay for.

Writing/Dialog - This is a whole new level of "OMGWTFBBQ" make your ears bleed garbage. With such snappy one-liners as "you'll have to do better than that" literally EVERY TIME someone attempts to attack a vampire and misses. (Apparently the director figured that instead of actually having any sort of special effect to show the vampire's ability to move quickly, every time the vampires moved, they would just shake the camera violently. Violent Shaking = Speed.) The writing was as horrific as everything else.

Sets/Props - This brings a whole new degree to "Sad." I think their set/prop budget was literally 0, and they just brought whatever they happened to have at home and used those for props that day. People wearing clothes that would be dated by today's standards, a token handicapped guy rolling around in an old wheelchair, and I believe that Casper's gun was the same one he used in Starship Troopers. Wouldn't surprise me if he'd had to buy it himself, and wanted to get as much mileage outta the prop as possible. It's sad to think that in the past hundred years, we've gone from horses to space travel, but in the next thousand years, we won't see ANY changes. Even the "computers" in the future are full of toggle switches and big buttons taken right out of old arcade machines.

As if all of this wasn't bad enough, the storyline is absolutely horrific. A whole lot of nothing happens until suddenly, Coolio cuts his hand while opening a coffin on the ship. It, like all the other coffins, is full of sand. A few drips of blood land in the sand, and next thing you know, Dracula has magically appeared and turned him into a vampire. (Nothing was ever explained about how 5 drops of blood into this "sand" could reconstitute Dracula, or why it was that he had 500 coffins full of this sand.) Coolio proceeds to go and yell at his crew mates while getting shot, and eventually goes back to talk to Dracula, who, I kid you not, is dressed JUST LIKE the Dracula from the old black and white 1950's movies. High collar, cape, hairdo, even makeup. As cliché as you can get. As Coolio and Dracula turn the other members of the ship into vampires, Dracula runs into Van Helsing. After such witty banter as "you'll have to do better than that" when Van Helsing can't stick him with a pool stick because the director keeps shaking the camera, Dracula turns Van Helsing into a vampire too, without much effort.

Finally, the token black guy, and the Playboy chick lock themselves in a room. In shutting the door, they (without too much effort) manage to cut off Dracula's arm, who then sits outside the door and cries for the remainder of the movie (which is about 25 seconds.) At this point, Playboy chick informs token black guy that she's actually a reprogrammed "Pleasure Bot" and says, "hey, we're all going to die anyway, let's go have sex." This is the talent of the writers here, people. His response? "You don't have to ask me twice, lady!" So he picks her up, and walks into the back room. Then the camera shows the outside of the ship. Ship blows up. Roll credits.

I wish I was making this crap up. This is by far the worst film I have ever seen (and I've seen a lot.) I'm actually surprised it went straight to DVD instead of straight into the garbage. I only wish there was a way to vote LESS than 1 on a movie.

This was an hour and twenty minutes of my life I'll never get back.

-Javin

The Hunted (2003)

What an incredible waste of film.

[1/10 · 27 February 2004]

Now, it takes a lot for me to take the time out of my day to write a comment on a film. Generally the film has to be incredibly good, or incredibly bad. This one, unfortunately, was the latter.

The "methods" it shows as being taught by the military were not JUST horribly flawed, and wrong, they were downright stupid. The fight scenes looked like something out of a bad B movie, which is particularly bad, considering that most of the movie was related to these fight scenes. (Small spoiler follows.)

Then let's get into the fact that the main "bad guy" fashions a metal blade knife in what should be (in movie time) less than 10 minutes from scrap that he finds around. Then he gets into another horribly choreographed fight scene with Tommy Lee Jones to end the movie.

I mean, come ON people. Have the viewers become THAT stupid that this movie could actually entertain someone? The concept (highly trained military personnel loses it and is let loose on civilians) had worlds of potential for a good thriller/adventure. However, it was just flat POORLY done, and as a prior soldier myself, I'm insulted to think that people might believe that even the most BASIC of hand-to-hand combat training might leave someone so horribly ill-equipped as this movie makes it seem.

Got the lowest rating from me. Not only was it an insult to the military, but was an insult to the viewer's intelligence as well.

-Javin

The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

What in the world happened?

[1/10 · 5 November 2003]

I'll attempt not to put too many spoilers in this one, but there WILL BE SOME. If you don't want any spoilers, DO NOT READ any further...

First, I'm above all else, a die-hard Matrix fan. I loved the first one, and even thought the "Reloaded" was brilliant. Reloaded was very thought provoking, well written, and really worked very well as a "bridge" in the trilogy. I was very much looking forward to the third installment, even taking the day off of work to go and see it.

All I can say is, WHAT were the Wachowski brothers THINKING? The mind-bending plots of the first two were completely non-existent in this one.

SPOILERS:

Early on, the battle at Zion begins, and as predicted, the humans are getting thoroughly thrashed. This became a running theme for the movie. EVERYONE gets their butts beat from start to finish, even up to the end of the movie. The 2 1/2 hour battle at Zion takes a break only long enough to bring you to a Neo/Agent Smith battle in the Matrix. This is the plot, people. No more, no less. Everyone loses, to boot. Zion gets their butts kicked, Neo gets his butt kicked, and it gets even WORSE from there. Almost nothing is accomplished (a temporary truce goes up between man and machine, and the Matrix still stands.)

My recommendation, though it really pains me to say this, is that you wait for it to come out on DVD, and watch it at a friend's house when THEY buy it. I own the Animatrix, The Matrix, and both Widescreen and Fullscreen versions of The Matrix: Reloaded. I'm debating whether or not to even spend the money when this one's released.

If you don't want to have to think about a movie, and you're just interested in some sci-fi eye candy watching people in machines shoot at other machines, this would be the movie for you.

I think the Wachowski brothers really need to pull this one out of theaters NOW, and change it while there's still SOME chance to save face.

Bait (2000)

Action Comedy - Nothing more, nothing less.

[10/10 · 5 September 2001]

I really am shocked to see the number of reviews that lambaste this movie. This movie was not intended to be a "deep thought" movie, which is what the vast majority of the reviewers seem to think it should be. In fact, it would appear that if ANY movie doesn't produce a life altering insight, and a deep, twisted, mind boggling plot, they would rate it a 1 or 2. Don't trash a movie because you don't like the genre, people.

This movie was an Action/Comedy flick, and that's all it was intended to be. And for an Action/Comedy, it was very well done. I was actually rather surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did, having never really been a Jamie Foxx fan, and having the over-used plot that it has.

The plot was nothing spectacular, using the typical criminal gets out of prison, and is thrown into bad-guy plot while trying to clean up his act (See Blue Streak, Hudson Hawk, 48 Hours, etc. etc. etc.) but it was warmed over with a bit of a technological twist. Now the "bad guys" are actually the "good guys" and the REAL "bad guy" is an uber-geek.

Jamie Foxx actually plays a convincingly humorous, while at the same time rather intelligent and serious main character, and didn't try to overdo the humor side of the film.

If you're looking for a deep underlying plot such as in "The Matrix" or a drama such as "Of Mice and Men" then this movie isn't for you. But if you enjoy the raw action, excellent fast-paced filming, and an occasional twist of humor tossed in, this movie won't disappoint you. I would normally have rated it about an 8 (on the same level as the Die Hard Trilogy), but instead gave it a 10 to try and bring the score up to what it SHOULD be.

Being John Malkovich (1999)

Well done... But what is it?

[5 September 2001]

This is one of those movies that I can clearly see both sides of the argument. It's one of those movies that you'll either walk away shaking your head in disappointment, or you'll be headed for the nearest movie store to pick it up.

As we sat back to watch this movie, I knew immediately it wasn't going to be the kind of movie I typically enjoyed. But very quickly, I realized this movie wasn't typical in ANY way. There was something strangely captivating, and even humorous, in a dark and twisted way, about this movie.

John Cusack shows the flexibility of his acting talent in this film, playing the part of a semi-insane nice guy, and Cameron Diaz shows that she too actually has some talent playing a sexually confused housewife. (How in the hell they managed to make her look that bad, I'll never know.)

All in all, it was an experience I actually ended up enjoying thoroughly, although I can't tell you exactly why. Definitely a good movie to watch with a few friends, and beer.

Of Mice and Men (1992)

Simply beautiful.

[10/10 · 5 September 2001]

It's not often that you stumble across a movie that you'd never heard of, and find that it should truly be a classic.

I only found this movie recently, and figured it was a quiet remake of the original (and horrible) 1939 version. At first, I wouldn't have given it a second glance, since I absolutely LOATHE movies that destroy the original book (Can we say Starship Troopers, anyone?) but then I noticed that it was Malkovich and Sinise. I figured this was an interesting match, so decided to pick it up. It was the best move I ever made.

It takes a lot for me to truly think a movie deserves a full 10, but this movie truly does. I was extremely shocked to see the low score on it, in fact. There's approximately ONE scene (and an appropriate one, I think) that doesn't follow the book's original storyline line by line. The acting was superb, the directing equally as fantastic, and the story made me feel like I was reading the book for the first time again.

I was absolutely shocked to find that the movie was over 8 years old, and that, even worse, it's not released on DVD! Despite the fact that you'll have to use VHS (which for a movie you'll want to watch over and over, this is a bad thing) I'd strongly suggest buying yourself a couple of copies, and sitting down with a LOT of popcorn, and a few boxes of tissue.

If you're looking for action, thriller, comedy, suspense, or ANYTHING other than a classic drama, you probably shouldn't try this movie. However, if you're wanting to see the epitome of drama beautifully done in a classic story about true love and friendship, and the pain of just being human, this movie is for you.