Maybe This Could Transform Into A Good Movie

As I usually do on the weekends, I went out to catch the latest big movie to be released. This time around was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and in short, it could have been better.

The problem with the movie was that it had all kinds of flaws. The story is too hard to follow, the acting feels hollow, the action starts blending together after a while, and there are characters and scenes that could have been removed with no negative consequences. Seriously, there's so much stuff they could have cut out of the movie. Did we need the subplot with the pain-in-the-ass bureaucrat annoying the military? Did we need the two Autobots that were bad Jar Jar Binks wannabes? Even I was offended by how racist they were, and I'm a white guy from the south.

You know what else could have been cut? All the scenes with the parents of Shia LaBeouf's character. I didn't think the movie needed the scene where his mom gets high on pot brownies, and they didn't really serve any purpose when they turned up at the end of the movie. They outlived their usefulness after the first twenty minutes of the movie, in all honesty. The same can be said for Shia's roommate, a one-joke character who didn't need to stick around for the entire movie.

Really, the only part of the movie that works is the CGI, which is fantastic. It looks really believable, so I can't complain about that. But pretty CGI can't save an otherwise lame movie. The whole thing is utter nonsense extended for about forty-five minutes longer than it should have lasted. There's no reason for this movie to be two and a half hours long. And I just can't believe that the guys who wrote the Star Trek remake actually wrote this. To wrap this up, I guess I'd give Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen two stars out of the usual five. If I were a Transformers fan, I'd be pissed.

Drag Me To The Land Of The Lost

I've never made it a secret that I enjoy seeing movies at drive-in theaters. I haven't exactly made a habit of it (the last time I went was near the end of 2007), but I think it's a lot of fun when I actually get the chance to go. It's always an entertaining experience for me, at least. The reason I bring this up is because I just got home from the drive-in theater over in Harrodsburg, and I thought I'd talk a little about the double feature they ran.

First on the bill was Land of the Lost. I've never seen the old television show, and combining that with the less-than-stellar reviews it's been getting, and I was just going to rent the DVD in a few months. But I figured, what the heck, I'll give it a shot. And to tell you the honest truth, it's an ultimately forgettable movie. The jokes are worth a chuckle, but nothing was worth full-blown laughter. The movie wasn't good or bad; it was just okay. It was just kinda there. It's a heaping pile of adequacy. And in summary, Land of the Lost is a forgettable little movie that I'm not sure that even fans of the show will remember a year from now. So it gets a thumbs-in-the-middle with two and a half stars. I've seen worse movies, but I've certainly seen better ones too.

The second half of the double feature was Sam Raimi's new horror movie, Drag Me to Hell. This was another one that I was probably going to wait to watch on DVD, since for the life of me, I just couldn't get excited enough to see it theatrically. But what do you know, I went to see it anyway. I'm glad I did, because it was actually pretty good. I liked everything about the movie, especially Alison Lohman's performance, but the movie is really more spooky than it is scary. That's not really a bad thing, so I'm not going to call it a complaint. Drag Me to Hell was definitely worth the three and a half stars I'm going to give it, and if you have any interest in it at all, go see it if it's still playing anywhere near you. The movie kinda dropped off the face of the earth, which is a real bummer.

The best part about the whole thing, though, was watching a horror movie at a drive-in theater, with the time well past midnight, and with the occasional streak of lightning on the horizon. That, my friends, is what I like call a good time. I'll have to do it again sometime.

A Book Worth Burning

I'm not sure how many people will realize this, but this summer marks the tenth anniversary of The Blair Witch Project. Yeah, I know, right? It's been a whole decade since that movie came out. So to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the movie, I've posted my new review of its sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. What do you mean, you didn't know The Blair Witch Project had a sequel? Don't feel bad, because it kinda sucks. So have fun reading that and my old review of the original Blair Witch movie, okay?

What Happens In Vegas...

Just got home from seeing The Hangover. It was either that, Land of the Lost, or Drag Me to Hell, so as to be expected, I ended up choosing the one I wanted to see the most. I think I made a wise decision, because The Hangover was really funny.

Just about every element of the movie - the jokes, the actors, the situations - are hilarious. Even the things that aren't obvious setups for jokes are funny. I'm actually surprised by just how funny it was. I'll admit that going in, I thought it would be one of those movies where all the best stuff was in the advertisements, but I was wrong. The Hangover was definitely worth seeing, because almost every scene was able to illicit laughter from yours truly. So I'm going to give it three and a half stars on my usual Five-Star Sutton Scale, leaning towards four. I just can't recommend it enough.

And remind me to never steal Mike Tyson's pet tiger, okay?