Getting Out Of Gitmo

As much as I enjoy motion pictures, I haven't found the opportunity to get out to a theater since I saw The Eye back at the beginning of February. I finally did get around to hitting the movie theater this afternoon to check out Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, and I might as well share my thoughts regarding it.

I really liked Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, so I naturally assumed I'd enjoy the sequel as well. But the truth of the matter is that I'm on the fence about it. There's some funny parts, and Neil Patrick Harris's extended cameo is awesome, but other than that, the movie is adequate at best.

A lot of people noted a quite subtle social commentary about race relations in the original Harold & Kumar movie. And in Escape From Guantanamo Bay, they ditch the subtlety and practically beat you over the head with the comedic social commentary. The main antagonist in the movie is both incredibly racist and stupid as all hell, and they practically come out and say that the doofuses running the country are making every other American look bad. Like I said when I spoke about The Tripper, I'm not really into movies that wear the political snark right out there on their sleeve. I guess I'm saying that I appreciate subtlety more. Admittedly, some of the humor does work, but the rest? Meh. Seriously, did we really need the cheesy cameo by a George W. Bush facsimile, or the cheap deus ex machina that results from said cheesy cameo?

Ultimately, the handful of truly entertaining moments weren't enough to sustain it for a two-hour running length. Had they trimmed the fat and cut the movie down to about 90 or 95 minutes, then the movie probably would have been better. There were a few scenes - Harold and Kumar encountering the inbred son of an affluent redneck couple, then a group of Klansmen led by Christopher Meloni from Law & Order: SVU; the movie's primary antagonist interrogating Harold and Kumar's Jewish friends by taunting them with a pouch full of money - that could have been trimmed or cut out entirely, and I don't think anybody would have noticed the difference. But as it stands, it might be a good sequel, but it just isn't all that great of a movie. At least the cast is entertaining, because without them, I don't know if I'd have made it. I guess I'll give it two and a half stars, and a recommendation only to people who absolutely loved the first movie. And to those of you who do see it, make sure to stay all the way through the closing credits.

I might not have been to the theater in nearly three months, but with the summer blockbuster season starting next week with Iron Man, I'm sure I'll be there more often.

The Once And Future Writing

A few posts ago, I mentioned a doubleheader of reviews that I was in the midst of writing. For all none of you who may be interested, those reviews are coming along swimmingly. One of them is completed, and I'm almost halfway through the other one. I'm hoping to have it done and both of them posted within the next few days, if I'm lucky.

There for a while, it seemed like I was going through a phase of not wanting to write very many reviews at all. Now I've got more movies lined up than I know what to do with. I've got at least eight backed up on CD-R's, and at least a dozen more near the top of my Netflix queue. If I do end up writing reviews for all of them, I'll be spending a lot of time writing more reviews. Hopefully I'll be able to actually crank some of these reviews out sometime, especially since a remake of one of the potential reviews is being released in October.

But as always, we'll just have to see how these things go.

Back To The Classics

Since we're talking about comic books here at the MSX, I might as well mention that thanks to the county's public library, I began re-reading Watchmen earlier this week. Maybe it's because of the fact that I'm getting to hold the actual physical book instead of looking at the bootlegged version I'd downloaded off the Internet, but I'm finding myself being pulled deeper into the story while reading it now. Nothing feels superfluous or unnecessary, maybe with the exception of the whole "Tales of the Black Freighter" thing, which I really just wasn't all that into. Both the writing and the artwork are fantastic, a word that I could use for the Watchmen reading experience as a whole.

Take away any sort of social commentary on the Cold War or '80s society or anything like that, and Watchmen is still an awesome read. And I'd be willing to say that it's because of the characters. I'll fess up to being a Rorschach fan, but every character in the book has something intriguing that they bring to the table. Even the guy running the newsstand is worth keeping up with during his random scenes. The awesomeness of the characters, though, is just a testament to how awesome Alan Moore's writing is.

So yeah, I guess you could say I like Watchmen. Why do I not own my own personal copy of it yet?

I've Got Mail (And Comics)

I swear, I think my affection for comic books is starting to snowball. I say that because thirteen old issues I'd ordered online came in the mail just a few minutes ago. They set me back thirty bucks, but I'd say my haul was worth it, especially since I managed to score the Who Wants To Be A Superhero? comic for two dollars.

Needless to say, I've got plenty of reading to do.

Breaking Some Silence

Yeah, okay, so I've been pretty much neglecting the MSX as of late. But outside of all the comics I've been buying lately, I've had practically nothing at all to talk about. Yes, I understand that's a lame excuse, but that's all I've got. I'm sure I could talk about my comic purchases, but it would end up becoming something lame, and I don't want lame. Though I will admit that I could use the new content.

Speaking of new content, I am working on some, in the form of new movie reviews. Some of the reviews I've got planned for the summer, but right now I'm halfway through what will be the first part of a planned double feature. Unless you're an ultra-devoted fan of the horror genre, I doubt you've heard of either movie, but I hope you'll still anticipate the reviews regardless. :)

But those summer reviews.... all in due time. Just wait and see.

A Quick Double-Shot

Haven't posted in a while, so why not break that up with two bite-sized "S@TM" mini-reviews?

First up is a little slasher movie called The Tripper, David Arquette's directorial debut. And like any good slasher movie, The Tripper's plot is astoundingly simple. Six ultra-stoned wannabe hippies head up to a redwood forest in northern California for a festival in the vein of Woodstock. But also in town is a psychopath obsessed with Ronald Reagan, and with a handy-dandy axe in tow, he's violently crashing the party.

I'm not exactly what you'd call a fan of hippies, so you'd think a horror movie about somebody hunting them down would be my kind of cinematic adventure. But when The Tripper starts throwing in the lame political satire, it loses me. I just plain don't care about politics whatsoever, so any movie where people are all "wah wah George Bush sucks, boo hoo we're so oppressed" bores me to tears. Not that I like Dubya or anything, but sometimes I get tired of hearing about how much people think he sucks. Though for all the mockery The Tripper deals towards the right wing, it does have a laugh or two at the expense of the left wing as well, so there's at least some balance.

There is some good to be had in The Tripper, though. There's some good performances from Lukas Haas, Jason Mewes, Thomas Jane, and Paul Reubens (and a funny cameo from Courteney Cox too), and when it tries being a straightforward slasher movie, it's entertaining. But all the political stuff really pulls it down. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want my slasher movies to try and make profound statements about the government. I just want my slasher movies to be slasher movies. I guess I could have stood all the politics if it just wasn't handled so... lamely, I guess is the word I'm looking for. So I guess I'll give The Tripper two and a half stars on my patent-pending Five-Star Sutton Scale.

The other movie on the docket is [Rec], a Spanish horror movie that I discovered through the Internet. The basic plot of the movie centers around a reporter who hosts a TV show, following certain people during the nighttime hours. I imagine it's kinda like Dave Attell's old Comedy Central show Insomniac, only without all the booze or the weirdos. Our fearless reporter's latest episode has her shadowing the Barcelona fire department, but things start going all to hell when she and her cameraman follow two firemen on a call to an apartment building. Soon, they and a small group of others find themselves quarantined inside the tiny building with a growing number of flesh-hungry zombies.

Seriously, [Rec] is an insane movie. It's done in a wild cinéma vérité style akin to The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, which works to make things more frightening. It allows things to sneak up on you, and turns regular jump scares scarier. And it helps that the cast all do fine jobs as well, especially lead actress Manuela Velasco, who I thought was very likable in her role as the inquisitive (to the point of being pushy) reporter. I'm not exactly sure how to properly describe it without giving things away, but [Rec] was definitely one of the scariest movies I've seen in a while. It definitely earns four stars on the Sutton Scale, and I'm totally looking forward to the eventual American remake.

And that's it for the two quickie reviews. I'm pretty sure I'll be coming back to [Rec] one day with a full-length review, maybe a double feature with a review of George Romero's Diary of the Dead. And what is it with all these recent movies using the Blair Witch style, anyway? Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, [Rec], The Poughkeepsie Tapes... all of them are using the handheld camera thing. The Blair Witch Project is nearly ten years old, what took so long?