Sound and fury signifying nothing
Movie reviews
Babylon A.D. Remember Vin Diesel’s two minutes of hotness which peaked with XXX and The Fast and The Furious? Those days are gone (I watched The Chronicles of Riddick, but for Karl Urban), and Babylon A.D. won’t bring them back. The first half of the film directed by Mathieu Kassovitz (who has disowned the finished product) isn’t bad, but as it barrels along, shredding your eardrums with very loud rap music and explosions (and Gerard Depardieu in ridiculous make-up—completely unnecessary for a guy who didn’t really need prosthetics to play Cyrano De Bergerac), it gets more and more pointless. The ending is particularly “Ehh?” After all that trouble, death and destruction (and my battered eardrums), that’s it?
Diesel’s next project: The Fast and The Furious: Admission of Has-Beenhood.
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. Attack of the Pan’s Labyrinth Creatures, but without the complexity of Pan’s Labyrinth. Nice to look at, but it’s one note held for two overlong hours. Some of it is just daffy. For instance, it tries to bring in an environmental angle with that forest creature. It’s the last of its kind, declares the pale blond prince (Not Legolas). Then he throws it into the sewer. Ehh? Guillermo Del Toro better make good on The Hobbit, or there’s an army of Tolkien fans who will tear him apart.
Max Payne. I have no idea what this is, I’ve only seen the trailer, but the voice-over reminded me that a major part of Mark Wahlberg’s considerable charms is his voice. He sounds like a polite maniac (pronounced man-yak).
Grass has a major issue with For The First Time, the KC Concepcion vehicle. In the movie, all of KC’s friends are ex-girlfriends of the Richard Gutierrez character. Â One after another they get involved with him, and they’re already friends at the time. Dating your friend’s ex: not kosher. Even if she gives you clearance, it’s uncomfortable. Fine, there are some extraordinary circumstances, but in most cases it’s just scuzzy.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
September 15th, 2008 at 14:55
Max Payne is (originally) a third person shooter video game. I played the PC version years ago (and its sequel), and it’s not bad. The setting’s dark (the term “noir” comes to mind), violent and brutal. One would think John Woo was directly involved during the game’s development. This game features bullets going straight to the target, as if the camera’s piggybacking on the bullet (I think they call this technique “bullet time”), and slo-mo gunfights, ala John Woo, and of course blood. Lots of it.
The Max Payne series was a hit among gamers, and there was talk that there would be a movie version, starring Sylvester Stallone. Nothing came of it, until now, that is. So, Mark Wahlberg is Max Payne?
I wonder how it turned out.
September 25th, 2008 at 14:06
jediknight: If it’s Muhky Muhk, I’d go see that….(affecting intonation of fake street-thug accent perfected by Mr. Wahlberg’s hip-hop guise). Better him than Old Stallone, who might just transform it into Cobra II (now with Bullet Time!)
As for Hellboy II (can’t resist it…it’s me own inner fanboy talkin’) – loved Ron Perlman’s portrayal…just the right amount of self-deprecating humor befitting a half-human, half-demon who just happens to be an ander-de-saya to the Human Torch’s sexier sister!
Who’d have thought that “Not Legolas” used to do time in a boyband??