Poseidon.

Take a classic disaster movie, packed to the rafters with stars and made damn-near perfect, then fill it with B-list and faded 'stars', make it far shitter and what do you have? Poseidon!

It opens with a spectacular CG shot of the ship, it really is huge. That shot alone could have financed God knows how many independent movies. I'm not going in to the plot other than to say, there's a big luxury boat and it gets flipped over in the middle of nowhere, in the deep blue sea. End of.

The fundamental problem with Poseidon is the cast. Is there a 'leading man' out there with less charisma than Josh Lucas? I don't think there is, no. He is almost unwatchable in everything he does. It's not his fault, I'm sure. I bet he's every bit as hard-working as every other actor out there. It's just that he shouldn't be given any work in the first place. He should be as hard-working, but in McDonald's.

In short… my apathy for this movie is so great, and it is riddled with so much mediocrity that I would not know where to start. Just don't watch it. You can see where the money went in this one – an estimated budget of $160m – as it's all on screen. It's just that Wolfgang Petersen hasn't got a fucking clue what to do with the visuals.

He's still coasting on two movies, in my opinion, one of which wasn't even that good (Das Boot, which is truly wonderful, and The Perfect Storm, which isn't). Hopefully Poseidon's dismal showing at the box office will be a wake-up call for him. Surely something as fine as Das Boot couldn't have been a fluke?

The Weather Man

This is a curious thing. Nicolas Cage plays a TV weather man who seems to be heading for a breakdown after hearing his that his dad (Michael Caine) is dying.

Really, that's about it. The movie goes nowhere and does absolutely nothing. It's beautifully photographed, full of bleak, washed-out colour, but the photography is capturing nothing. Reasonable performances performing fuck-all.

A couple of moments made me chuckle, I must admit. But two in a 97-minute movie which purports to be some kind of black-ish comedy? Pffffft.

I would imagine this was a low-key movie when it started out; that works in my head, anyway. A decent script, a low-budget movie, possibly with a lot more bite to it than it ended up with. But then you get stars involved, and the budget spirals upward… And a big-name director gets attached, and the next thing you know a movie which does nothing but make you wonder how you can get those 97 minutes back is expected to have decent box office.

Hmmmmm. Maybe I should be running a studio, because if Gore Verbinski had come to me with this and said 'it'll cost $35million', I would have told him to fuck off, given him $6m and told him to get on with it. Where the hell did they spend $35m? I can only assume it went on salaries, because nothing happens in this movie to justify that budget. Okay, I know that's not especially high for Hollywood, but even so...

Shite. Avoid, then come back and thank us because you haven't seen this.

Snakes on a Plane

Hi there, MovieGrenaders! Slyde here, finally getting his lazy ass in gear and writing my inaugural post here on the (soon to be) ultimate movie review site.

Part of the reason that it took so long for me to post is, because since I haven’t watched too many movies lately, I therefore haven’t watched too many SHITTY movies lately, which kind of doesn’t leave me a lot to write here about, does it. Of course, another reason why I haven’t posted yet is because, as I already implied, I’m a lazy bastard.

But none of that is really here nor there, since me being lazy isn’t the reason I am posting.

No, I am here to talk about the god-awful mess of movie that was Snakes On A Plane.

Two years ago, when the net first caught buzz of this then-soon-to-be-released turd, bloggers went absolutely ape-shit with how fucking cool this movie was going to be. As information and small snippets of the film were leaked to the press, the blogging community collectively shit their pants at how fucking rad this movie was DESTINED to be. The momentum on the web kept building and building right up until a few months before release, when the word from the studio went out to report that the principal cast was rushed back into the studio to “re-shoot some scenes to make them even MORE violent”. That pretty much sent the movie-loving geek community into a collective orgasm.

I must confess that I WAS one of the aforementioned geeks who was dying to see this film.

Mind you, I KNEW it was going to suck. We all KNEW it. No movie with a title like Snakes on a Plane could be anything other than bad, but we all hoped it would be one of those “It’s so bad it’s really good” movies that we all love (but don’t admit to).

Unfortunately, this movie fell under the category of “It’s so bad, that it just sucks”.

I really found nothing redeeming, or at least funny, about this movie.

First off, all the deaths were pretty fucking stupid:

Snakes kill a couple who are fucking in the bathroom, by biting the girl’s breasts.

Then another guy is taking a leak in another loo when a snake swims up to bite his hog.

Another snake then squirms up the dress of a fat girl sleeping in her seat, to bite her in the eye.

Then the deaths REALLY start to get stupid.

It just goes downhill from there. Plus if I see ONE more bad Samuel Jackson movie where he continues to pretend to be a bad-ass in a movie that just sucks, I might just kill someone. Mr. Jackson, you haven’t made a movie where you were a REAL bad mutha-fucka since Pulp Fiction, and you probably never will again.

The final capper for me on why this movie needs a grenade: The stereotypes! Pretty much everyone on the plane is a stereotype of some form or another. The prissy rich girl who keeps a little dog in her purse, the arrogant hip-hop star who needs to get back in touch with his “real” side, the Asian kick-boxer who boards the plane in a tank top showing off his biceps (I’m not fucking making this shit up!). The list goes on and on.

At one point I was just expecting EVERY fucking stereotype imaginable to show up on the plane. Chinese guy in komono pulling a rickshaw; Ski-parka Eskimo complete with whale harpoon, shifty-eyed gangster in black pin-stripe suit fiddling with a violin case......

You get the idea.

Do yourselves a solid, and give this fucker a pass.

Cyborg 2

OK. I'm not sure if this is what Badgerdaddy had in mind when he started this site. A 14 year-old film that was never released until it was shot straight to video in 1999. Six years after it was completed! Of course it's gonna suck! To what levels...well that is for you to decide. No wait! That is for ME to decide! I think I may be done using exclamation points for a little while. That last one hurt.

Let me start off by saying that I have a bit of a soft spot for the first Cyborg film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. It had it all. He did splits and shit while duking it out with post-modern pirates in the desert after some kind of plague-induced holocaust or something. What's not to love? The plot was silly. JCVD must protect a cyborg with info on a cure for the plague on a trip to Atlanta (Atlanta?). Really it was just an excuse for him to do splits and shit. The kind of stuff his fans really wanted to see in 1989. I saw this one in the theaters when it came out, fact fans. Honestly.

The sequel doesn't seem to have a whole hell of a lot to do with the first one. Sure, there is this one dream sequence that references the first film with moon-lit shots of the Muscles from Brussels (hey...I didn't create the nickname). But it really could have ignored the original film altogether and it wouldn't have been any worse. It wouldn't have been any better either, but that is neither here nor there.

This version of the Cyborg is played by Angelina Jolie in her feature-film debut. An 18-year old Angelina Jolie, that is. Sure, she was in a movie with her dad back when she was a kid and she did a few short films for a friend of hers, but this was her first real starring role as listed on her IMDB page. I gotta say...she is pretty damn hot in this movie. Her acting is a bit robotic, but she is playing a cyborg. Ha...see what I did there? I made a funny. Erm.

Oh, and she gets naked in it.

There you go. If you wanna see a naked Angelina Jolie when she was 18 or so for a few seconds, then by all means watch Cyborg 2. If you can somehow get through life without that little bit of titillation (yeah...I went there again) then you are a better man/woman than I.

I can die a happy man now. All of a sudden I'm a little sleepy. Nite all.

Smokin' Aces

Okay, this is a controversial-ish choice, and I don't have much time at all. My gripe isn't with the movie, but the marketing.

I know marketing people are among the lowest in the universe, but seriously, what were these cunts thinking? Most of the UK marketing advertised this like it was some sort of knockabout action comedy adventure, where some hitmen were all trying to kill the same target, causing mayhem somewhere or other.

Well, the same target bit was true. The hitmen/women bit was true. Knockabout action adventure kinda thing? No fucking way.

The target is fucked up on drugs, hates himself and is given little choice in selling out his comrades as he tries to turn state's evidence and get into witness protection. It hurts him. He's off his tits a lot of the time. He's falling apart. Ha ha, oh the humour!

Some of the hitmen are killing indiscriminately and are really quite vile. Not a huge amount of humour about any of them, save for one band of twisted fucks. Even their deaths are amusing.

A lot of the action is brutal, not knockabout in the least. The deaths hurt, on the whole. And there are a lot of deaths. People take revenge, people hurt. Some of it's pretty fucking ugly too.

There is humour in the movie, definitely, but the marketing people would have had both barrels from me if I had paid to see this in the cinema. It's been a long time since I've seen a film so completely mis-sold in its advertising.


So see this if you like action movies, it's got a reasonably solid script and a superb cast (led by Ryan Reynolds, who is usually the best thing about any movie he's in, alongside a rather good Ben Affleck, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia and the always-great-value Jeremy Piven. Oh, and the very surprising Alicia Keys), it's just maybe not what you would expect from seeing any of the trailers. So there.

Superman Returns

Let me start off by saying that despite my love of all things comic-book related, I hate Superman.

I fucking hate him! The character doesn't make any sense to me. His alter-ego, Clark Kent, makes no sense to me. How the hell are we supposed to believe that intelligent people can't see through a pair of glasses and a different hair style as a disguise? He is a boring, do-good superhero with ridiculously powerful abilities. Abilities that really can't be overcome unless one wields kryptonite. And one always seems to wield kryptonite. But my biggest problem with the character is his ability to fly.

Hawkman can fly, but he has a costume and some kind of "ninth metal" that defies gravity which allows him to do so. Angel of the X-Men can fly, but he was born with wings. Iron Man can fly, but he uses rockets and his costume to do so. All fairly weak reasons, but at least they are reasons. Superman can fly because, er, well...our sun is yellow.

Huh?

Super strength? Fine. Speed? Check. Invulnerability? Sure. Freezing breath? Stupid, but why not. But flight? No way! At least give me a reason besides "uh, well...he flies", fer crissakes! Okay...I'm done. Onto the film.

It sucked.

The story takes place a number of years after Superman (and Clark Kent, by the way. Hmmm?) has disappeared to find his home planet of Krypton. He comes back...blah blah blah. Lois is married with a kid...blah blah blah. Lex Luthor is planning world domination...blah blah blah. Who fucking cares? The plot is stupid. Superman is ridiculously powerful so they can't find an villain for him to "fight", so they pull the old evil genius trick out of the book. One they have used a million times. And he uses kryptonite to weaken Supes! Genius! How do they keep coming up with these things?

Let's talk about casting. Brandon Routh is fine. I mean they were just casting a face and body type, so the acting part of it was totally secondary. But Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane? Five or six years after the last time we saw her when Superman defeated General Zod? 23-year old Kate Bosworth playing someone who should be in her mid-30's? Gimme a fucking break! And why the hell would Superman, or anyone for that matter, want to bang her bony ass? Someone needs to give that poor girl a sandwich.

And I glad to see that the Lex Luthor/Kitty (Kevin Spacey and Parker Posey) dynamic hasn't changed all that much since Gene Hackman and Valerie Perrine played those characters in the 70's. Okay, Perrine played Eve, but the character was the same. Why would an evil genius like Luthor put up with such an inane bitch?

James Marsden plays Lois Lane's love interest, well besides her super-lust for Superman. It looks like he is stuck in a rut playing characters in comic-book adaptations whose wife/girlfriend gets the hots for a cooler guy. Must suck being James Marsden.

So if you want to see a film with a more-than-obvious plot, actors sleep-walking their way through their roles, and one in which Superman fights, er, well no one...then Superman Returns is for you. Oh, and good luck with the Special Olympics. I'm rooting for ya, buddy!