shruew's Reviews

In the pantheon of movies featuring male buttocks and giant blue penises, Watchmen is clearly in the top 5 of all time.

No, some people look down on giant blue penis movies.  They say that it is low brow entertainment.  That such purile fair does not advance the medium of art it resides in.  Such people are morons.

They fail to realize the giant blue penises are symbolic.  Giant blue penises reflect man’s pursuit of happiness in an unyielding world filled with hatred, scorn and political upheaval.

And no movie shows this better than Watchmen.  Whether it’s hanging motionless of swaying side by side like a ships sail in the breeze, the giant blue penis in Watchmen carries us through an alternate universe circa 1985 with a bunch of stuff happens.  Without the giant blue penis, the movie wouldnt work.  The scenes wouldnt make any sense.  It’s that cohesive.

I give Watchmen 3670136790176901436124614.136136 Balls of Fury

I must admit that prior to seeing this movie I had a rather unfavorable view of pedophile priests.  However, like most stereotypes, once you explore further you find that your perceptions are not quite what you expect.  After doing some research on the FBI’s online crime statistics library, I found that a good 14.3% of human organ trafficking cases are indeed solved by pedophiles working in their spare time.  Now I know.  But, does the movie deliver the message well?

Yes, X-Files is a fine stand alone movie that you don’t have to be a fan of the show to like or get.  It concerns itself with a mysterious missing persons case and a potential pedophile who seemingly knows where to find clues in the case.

On the down side, there were some weak points in the story line.  I didn’t think the case was setup to be soooo compelling that they had to get the rogue Fox Mulder out of retirement.  Also, if I was trying to steal people to use their bodies to replace my husband’s, wouldn’t I pick a male body instead of females?  I mean, I know beggars can’t be choosers but come on.  I guess women only wear medic alert bracelets.  WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT in the previous sentances.

As typical in the X-files, it asks more questions than it answers.  For instance, they never explicitly state who sent that helicopter in the beginning.

Overall, I good show, I give it a solid:
896149064289361.365935193 Balls of Fury

Hellboy 2, or Bellboy 2 as my iphone keeps trying to correct me, is the loose remake of the 1973 classic “Black Mana, White Mama” starring Pam Grier, Margaret Markov and Zaldy Zshornack.  It is perhaps known as the best Zaldy Zshornack movie (to date).

For those unfamiliar with the plot of “Black Mama, White Mama” netflix says it “crosses the highly successful women-in-prison genre with the 1960’s classic The Defiant Ones” – and I couldn’t agree more; except for the fact that The Defiant Ones came out in 1958…

Hellboy 2 focuses on the tale of two odd couples.  One  is a lady who can turn into fire and barely control it, the other a hellspawn demon who is destined to destroy the world.  The other couple is a fishman and an elf.  Ok, so that last couple isn’t as odd as I first thought.  Thrown into the mix is the German steam man voiced by little Stewey Griffin (nice to see him finally stretch beyond his usual role).

Al Gore co-wrote the story to protest America’s failure to sign the Kyoto Accord.  So, in a sense, you can say that Hellboy is loosely based on women-in-prison meets the defient ones meets a power point presentation by Al Gore.

You see, long ago humans and every other type of creature on the planet made an agreement and only the non-humans are keeping their pact.  Sick of the parking lots and shopping malls, one elf takes it upon himself to re-declare war on mankind and make everything, uhhh, elf-like I guess.  Part 2 of his plan was never quite layed out.

Obviously, conflict occurs.  Between the couples, between the humans and non-humans.  All this action culminates in a dance off between the elf prince and bellboy for control of the Golden Army (which, to my eye, contained not a single Golden Girl).

I won’t spoil the ending, but someone does indeed win.

Overall, this is a good time and features more Mexican beer than I can recall seeing in a movie.

I give it: 315613613613461345135.135135 Balls of Fury

Wanted was written and produced by the Textile Workers Union of America and is meant to serve as an informative school film for young workers hitting the market place.  Does one get a boring office job where fat people click staplers by your ear?  Do you go to work in a cubicle where people have no honor and have sex with your girlfriend?

Or, do you work at the glorious textile factory like your father?  Where thousand year old tradition keeps workers safe, employed and making fine garments at a reasonable price.

Overall, despite being funded by the TWUA, the movie offers a fair and balanced look at cube life vs. the glorious world of textiles where people explode rats for fun and sweaters tell you who to kill.

The Meat Packers Union also has a brief cameo which somewhat distracts from the main message.  And why is a meat packing plant in a textile factory?   Well, the movie needed funding and perhaps children of today just aren’t that excited by textiles.  Perhaps they are enthralled by the possibility of meat packing and the Meat Packers Union catchphrase, “pussypussypussypussy.”

The movie follows Wesley Gibson who realizes that being computer illiterate to the point of not being able to figure out how to google something might not lend himself well to office work.  He just isn’t obsessed with post-it notes.  Seriously, there’s an entire scene to establish that.  A little over done.

Instead, he finds himself joining the Textile Union and going through their hazing process.  It’s quite an ordeal and he has to sleep in hardened wax a lot (fun trivia, textile workers hate body hair).

We follow Wesley as he learns about his father, the tradition of textile and what a great decision he’s made joining the union.

In my viewing, the ending wasn’t accepted very well.  The movie starts talking directly to the audience and literally mocks them.  “What have you been doing with your pathetic lives?  See how freakin’ awesome it is to be a Textile Union member?”

As an educational film I guess the movie works.  But, as a piece of entertainment, it’s downright horrible.

I give it: -135135135.642167 Balls of Fury.

Before I give my review of Sunshine let me declare the following:

I can successfully argue the value of the movie Waterworld.  I get the Faustian references in the movie Shaft’s Big Score.  I understand the allegory to the Cold War that Striptease represents.  (Her left silicon nodule represented the vast Soviet military the Kremlin could no longer afford as it took up 25% of the Russian GNP and her right silicon nodule represented the clandestine Nicaragua struggle.  How she shook them represented tensions between East and West powers).

With that said, let me say that Sunshine is the worst movie I have ever seen in my life.  Mixed Nuts – not even close.  The Road to Wellville – ah ha!  Amateur hour!  Look folks, I bought Ultraviolet just to hear the director’s commentary – I know my bad movies.

Sunshine is like waking up at 5am every morning and having Mormons slap you in the face with their golden plates; then they wedgie you with their magic underwear.   Sunshine is like getting a striptease from Gore Vidol.

And yet I had such high hopes.  I like your average Danny Boyle, your run of the mill Cillian Murhpy’s, your everyday Michelle Yeoh., and I even love science fiction.

Yet, this movie made me want to vomit crushed glass through my nose.

First of all, any movie that ever dares utter the line, “We should split up” automatically gets a negative 891389513985.31859 Balls of Fury.

What frustrates me most about this movie is that it was competently made.  The production seems sound.  The music is well placed.  The scenes seem well framed.  Yet, every word or action out of their mouths reminded me of Wiley E. Coyote planning an assault on the Road Runner.  We know it’s not going to work and after the second try it grows very very very old.  If there was a golden ratio of production value to inane plot – Sunshine would rip the very fabric of reality.

So, with that, I give Sunshine a rating even lower than Weekend at Bernies 2…….

-138573180578973189571389783175901739057139075907319057139075.318795178395 Balls of Fury.

Everyone who loves life has seen a movie that has had a positive, incredible affect on their life.

Whether it be a movie that connects you to a past that you knew about, but couldn’t humanize until you saw Schindler’s List.

Or perhaps you saw a movie that instantly told you what you wanted to do with your life.  Like watching Patch Adams and wanting to become a doctor.  Or, maybe Top Gun and wanting to be a male erotic volleyball player.

Still other movies take you a roller coaster ride of the imagination and opens new doors to your psyche through wonderment and magic that you never thought possible.  Like, for instance, Shaft in Africa where Shaft has to go to Africa to stop a modern slave ring.  Are you man enough?  Big and bad enough?  Are you gonna let ’em shoot you down?  Not my imagination!  No!

A have recently come across a movie that embodies all these traits of a classic movie — and more.

The movie — Balls of Fury.

That’s right, ping pong!  Or, as the movie teaches, as the Chinese like to call it — pingpong!

Ping pong is not just a perfectly constructed metaphor … it is life itself.  The earth is just a gas filled 40mm to scale ping pong ball spinning through the universe being jutted about by the the rackets of the universe — electro-nuclear and gravity.

Balls of Fury is now the center of the universe.  The lines that moore my soul to the purity of life.  My movie reviews will no longer be in the thumbs up scale.  It will be in terms of Balls of Fury.

I give Balls of Fury itself, 185135.35 Balls of Fury (roughly 135361331613.6136 thumbs up in the previous scale).

…in the style of Rom:

Wow.  Great movie, guys.  You really went all out with this one.  Good idea using swords, real original.  Where’d you get that idea, history?

This movie was alright.  I only went to go see it because a bunch of friends went and saw it.  For me, I’m waiting for James Cameron’s The Avatar before I really start spending money on movies.  Anyway, here’s the good and bad about 300.

Good)
– It had moving pictures, which is kind of neat.

Bad)
– Who has a giant hole in the middle of their palace?
– Isn’t the movie, you know, kind of gay with all the mostly naked men getting penetrated in all sorts of usual ways
– Giant rhino getting killed with a one shot one kill spear throw.  Incredible.  Yeah right…
– Who the heck designs these maps?  I mean that cliff area is a total spawn campers dream!  I bet half the spartans were lagging.
– The spartan spear is way over balanced.  I mean, the monkey ninja sword in real life would be much faster attack.  In the movie, it worked, what, at most once in every five times?

So yeah.  People are going to throw their money at this movie and just feed the big company movie machine.  That will just encourage people to make more movies with such original ideas like “fighting” and “swords.”  Whatever, I’m waiting for The Avatar…

Now, I haven’t seen The Avatar and it won’t be out for a couple of years.  But, I’m sure they actually will make sets for that movie, instead of just using the computer.  And, I’m pretty sure the fight sequences will be better.  I don’t know why people would go see 300 when The Avatar will be totally better!