tpcomputerman Reviews

The Dark Knight (2008)

Not just a comic book movie.

[10/10 · 20 July 2008]

There are some movies that simply transcend the genre they're supposed to fit into. As much as I loved Iron Man, Hancock, The Hulk and Hellboy II they were unabashed comic book movies. You will often hear people say things like, "That was a good Superhero movie" or, "That was a good comedy." Only serious movies like No Country for Old men and There will be blood are considered good movies, movies that aren't just dramas or historical fiction, but movies, pure and simple movies.

The Dark Knight isn't just a great comic book movie, it's a great movie. I think that fact that it's been named The Dark Knight and not Batman: The Dark Knight speaks volumes. A title like The Dark Knight makes it a pure movie, a title like Batman: The Dark Knight makes it a comic book movie and this movie deserves to be treated with more respect than that. This could very well be the first Comic book movie to be nominated for Best Picture (I don't think it'll happen, but I think it'll be considered.) Heath Ledger could be the first Super villain to be nominated for best actor and have a good a chance to win. If you're going to see this movie see it for his performance which was just as captivating as Javier Bardem is No Country for Old men. It's rare you get a bad guy where every time he comes on the screen to wonder to yourself, what's he going to do now? And a lot of the menace was in Heath's performance, he made the Joker evil yet, funny. My goodness, there were some jokes that you couldn't help but laugh at even though the situation wasn't really all that funny. (BTW, never asked him to do the magic trick with a pencil.) There were no wasted moments in this movie, there were no bad scenes, there were no moments where you rolled your eyes. It's hard to make a perfect movie, there's always something that I don't like about a movie, even the great ones but not this one. Sure, if I see it a few more times I'm sure I'll find a flaw somewhere but right now I'm marveling at how amazing it was to watch it for the first time. How often do you see a movie that blows you away the first time you see it? As much as I loved all the movies I mentioned above none really got to my insides like The Dark Knight. I left the theater feeling I had seen something truly amazing, something I'm going to come back to watch time and time again. Heck, I want to see it in Imax now and I might look to see it in Imax next weekend! I need to see this movie again cause it's just that good. I'm still buzzing about it almost 24 hours after seeing it and I'm sure I'll be buzzing about it for a very long time.

Even if you don't like Comic Book movies I'd recommend this movie without any reservations so, everyone who reads this, if you haven't seen it yet what are you waiting for, go see it!

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Not what I was expecting

[10/10 · 10 December 2007]

Every once in a while I see a movie that is really hard to explain. A movie that kind of stays with me hours, even days after I see it as I try to absorb what I just saw. No Country for Old Men is one of those movies.

Explaining the plot would be almost pointless because the movies is so much more than the plot, there were so many levels to the movie that I'm sure I missed most of them. On the surface, the movie is about a man, (Llewelyn) who, while hunting, comes across a drug deal gone bad. While investigating he finds a case filled with money, about 2 million dollars. He takes it for himself and tries his best to keep it from the people who it belongs too.

Hot on is trail is Chigurh (pronounced Sugar, or shugar) a man who, according to one character, has no sense of humor. That's almost like saying Tiger Woods can sort of play golf. Most of the movie focuses Llewelyn trying to keep one step ahead of Chigurh, but that's really not what the movie is about, that's just what you see on the surface.

Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem, is one of the most evil characters I've ever seen. Every time he was on the screen with another character I wondered if that character was going to survive. The movie opens with Chigurh killing a deputy in a very ugly way, by strangling him, the look on Chigurh's face as he did it was one of pure evil. Chigurh isn't just a man, he was sometimes an unstoppable force of nature.

In one of he more intense scenes I've ever seen you have Llewelyn waiting in a darkened hotel room, he knows Chigurh's nearby looking for him and he just waits. I don't think I breathed until the scene finished playing out, the tension was just to thick and so well set up and executed I was totally drawn in.

Tommy Lee Jones plays an aging cop trying to put the pieces together and he sparkled in every scene he was in. I think this is his best performance since The Fugitive and I thought he was fantastic in that movie. If he's not nominated for best actor I'll be shocked. What I really enjoyed was how totally out of his league he really was. This wasn't a cop who was hell bent on finding or stopping a killer, he was an old cop who thought he's seen it all but, once he realizes he's up against someone as evil as Chigurh, he gets afraid. He wants to do the right thing but he just can't fathom this kind of man, this kind of evil. Of course, it's not all played out that black and white, (levels, remember, levels) it's just something I thought while watching it. You might think something else.

It's hard to talk about this movie without saying something about the end. I won't go into details because I want everyone to see it untainted like I did. For me, I was confused, then angry, then confused again, then finally I accepted what had happened and moved on. I love that the Cohen Brothers did something different, something you'd never, ever see in a Hollywood movie.

My prediction, this movie will be nominated for Best Picture, Javier Bardem will be nominated for the best actor, Tommy Lee Jones for Best Actor, Cohen's for best adapted screen play, and probably best director.

So yeah, I'd highly recommend this movie, just leave your preconceived notions of what a movie should be at the door.

The Rundown (2003)

Old fashioned action fun

[27 September 2003]

I don't know why, but when I came out of the theater after watching `The Rundown' I was smiling. That was a good movie, and do you want to know why? Because of The Rock, Seann William Scott and Christopher Walken. All three were perfectly cast, all three looked like they were having fun, and all three were just great to watch on the screen! I guess I should also give credit to Peter Berg who directed the movie because after all, the director gets all the credit when things go right, right?

Anyway, the basic plot. The Rock plays Beck, a bounty hunter of sorts, he does jobs for this one guy (who's name I don't recall) because Beck owes this guy something, they never really go into details, but the guy wants one more thing before he'll let Beck go, head down to the Amazon and get his son back.

I like it when plots are simple, and this one pretty much is. When Beck gets there he find that a warlord (Walken) has pretty much enslaved the village and Travis (Scott) thinks he's found the key to saving the village, this statue that is worth millions. Beck doesn't really care, all he wants is to take Travis back, but of course it's never that easy and they get lost in the jungle and have to get back.

First, let me tell you why I liked the movie. The Rock. The only movie I've seen the Rock in so far has been the Mummy Returns, I didn't see Scorpion King so I don't know how he was in that one, but this movie he just, well he just Rocks!! He kind of reminds me of Arnold when he was in movies like Commando, and Red Scorpion, you know, the movies that really didn't have a great script but for some reason you liked? This script wasn't great, but it was fun and what made if fun was Beck. The Rock gave Beck some personality, what? Personality!

The Rock doesn't play Beck as a guy who can kick ass, he plays him a guy who doesn't want to kick ass but knows that he can. He always tries to avoid fights, he does everything he can to not fight but of course no one ever listens to him.

I'll give you an example, in the very beginning he is hired to get from a Super Bowl quarterback who is a really bad gambler his super bowl ring to help pay off the debt. Unfortunately the guy is surrounded by his linemen, really big mean guys. So, Beck goes up to the guy in a club and is really, really nice to him and asks him for the ring. Of course, the guy doesn't give it to him so Beck goes into the bathroom and makes a call. He doesn't want to hurt these guys (Mostly because they have a chance to repeat) but he's told that he needs to, so he goes out and gives the guy one more chance, he says no and Beck just kicks some butt!

The action for that fight wasn't very good, strobe lights and quick cuts made it very hard to follow and I was worried, but the later fights turned out to be really cool and more than once you heard the audience go `ow!' at something on the screen.

Oh, and it's cartoon violence, you know, the kind where they just beat the good guys and bad guys up but a few minutes later they're all walking around like nothing happen? But it fits the tone of the movie, so it's okay.

So, I guess in conclusion, The Rundown is a mindless, entertaining action adventure movie, so if you like mindless action movies where there is very little blood, lots of cartoon like violence, and you want to see the next generation of action star (The Rock will be on the same level as Arnold and Stallone very soon I think) then go see it and be sure to leave realism at the door.

Matchstick Men (2003)

Nick Cage is awsome!

[20 September 2003]

Reviewing a movie like Matchstick Men is tough because it's a con movie and as such I really can't go into the plot all that much. So, I'll just give a quick little synopsis of the plot, but really if you've seen any trailers for the movie, you know the plot pretty well.

Nicolas Cage plays Roy, a con man (or, as he likes to say, a Con Artist!) who has a lot of problems. For one, he's a compulsive cleaner, he hates the outdoors and he has lot of ticks Roy needs medication to keep him sane.

One day he knocks his pills into the sink and when he calls his doctor to get more he finds out that his doctor is no longer in town! This provides one of the funnier/saddest part of the movie. I'm not sure if it was suppose to be played up for laughs or not, the tone was kind of hard to tell, but Roy spend the next day and a half cleaning his house, his ticks got worst and well it made me feel kind of bad for him.

His partner Frank, played by Sam Rockwell provides him with the number for another psychologist who can help. Roy goes to the psychologist thinking that it'll be easy, to just ask for the pills and he'll get them. No, this guy wants to help Roy and will not give him any pills until he talks. Which, I must say, shows two things. One, Nick Cage is great when he plays these type of rolls, and two, he's damn funny. What he tells the psychologist was both funny and sad. During that time though it's reviled that Roy was married at one time, and when his wife left she was pregnant and he doesn't know what happen to the child who would be 14 by now.

After getting the pills (only a weeks worth mind you) Roy decides to find out about his daughter, but he can't because he's too scared, so after getting the number of his ex wife he asks his psychologist to make the call when he can. Later that night he gets a call from him and finds out that he has a daughter who wants to meet him.

That's as far as I'll go with the plot because the movie really picks up from there as he bonds with his new daughter and sets up a really complex and dangerous con.

Like I said, Nick Cage is great in the movie, but I also want to point out that his daughter, Angela (played by Alison Lohman) was just fantastic to watch. She really lit up the screen when she smiled and it looked like Alison Lohman was just having a ball playing her. She was your typical 14 year old (only, and this shocked me when I found out, Alison Lohman is 24 years old! If you watch it, keep that in mind and tell me she doesn't look like a 14 year old.) who knew just how to work her dad! Some of the funnier moments came after he would yell at her, then she'd start to cry and Roy would just completely collapse and start apologizing for what he said, even if he was completely right! It was just really funny.

Matchstick Men isn't a fast paced movie, it's more of a character study between Roy and Angela and how she changes his life and makes him reprioritizes his values and the way he runs his life.

Underworld (2003)

What a waste of a good concept

[3/10 · 20 September 2003]

You know what I hate? When a movie that has a really good concept just totally sucks. I went to see Underworld today, from the previews I thought it looked kind of cool, sort of a Matrix with Vampire and Werewolf's, not a bad combo I thought. Although, personally I think that the Matrix, as great as it was, has ruined action movies. I mean, how many times do we need to see a super slow motion shot with the camera spinning around in a 360 degree arc while the person is shooting a gun before we just go `ho hum.' You know what I mean? When it was done in the first Matrix it was cool as s***, when you see it on Charlie's Angles, well it's just gone too far! Oh, sorry, lost my train of thought there, I was talking about Underworld. The basic plot of Underworld is a war between the Vampires and the Werewolf's. It stars Kate Beckinsaleas Trini. . . I mean Selene (I kept wanting to say `Dion?' every time they said her name. For all those people out there to who want to write books and stuff, creating good character name is very important!) who is a hunter of werewolf's. During one of her hunts she notices that a pack of werewolfs are stalking a man named Michel, she saves his life but he gets away, from there she wants to know why they were after him and what she finds out will have dire effects on both her, the Vampires and the Werewolf's. That's the plot people, that's it. There are times when simple plots done right can make a great movie. I mean, the Matrix had a pretty simple plot but they did it so right that it made it an awesome movie. This movie had a simple plot, a great concept, a good actress, and some good effects but did nothing with it. It was just a loud, violent mess that made little sense.

My major problem was with the story logic. Trini. . . I mean Selene thinks that Kraven, her boss or something, is working with the wereworlf's for some reason. But, you know, I don't know why she thought that. All we saw was her trying to get to Michel while Kraven yelled at her not too. How to you make the logical jump from Kraven not wanting her to save Michel to Kraven working for the Werewolf's? I didn't see anything myself that would lead me to believe that Kraven was nothing more than an asshole Vampire.

Also, Kraven, for some reason or another, is in love with Trini. . . damn, Selene (Dion?) and I just don't know why. All she did to him throughout the entire movie was disobey him, run away from him, shoot him angry looks, punch him, and totally tell this guy that she hates his guts and will have nothing to do with her. Now, I can see if they gave any hint that at one time they were lovers or something, but they didn't, in fact, from what I can tell, she has hated him for hundreds of years. Geez dude, take a hint would you! So, later in the film Selene (Dion?) I guess fell in love with Michel the way she was giving him, you know, that look throughout the movie, how they sort of kissed at one point, oh and how she pretty much got excommunicated from the Vampire's because of him, I guess she was in love with him. But, how? Don't you need, oh, I don't know, some time together to fall in love? Or to maybe have some sort of common bond to fall in love? Here it just seemed that they were in love because the scripted called for them to fall in love. Really though, they could have come up with a better reason for her to be protecting him as much as she did besides the love story. I don't know, it's like you need to have the two main characters fall in love or something, even if logic dictates that they shouldn't. At least in the Matrix they had some downtime to make Trinity and Neo to fall in love, this movie was pretty much action from start to finish. Well, I always like to say something nice about a movie, so here it goes. The final fight was pretty cool! Not a good reason to see the movie, but the last 10 minutes or so had some really good action between Vampire and Werewolf. What really bugs me is this movie had some really good ideas, the Vampire/Werewolf war, the reasons for the war, the whole part about the elders (there are three Elders, one awake, two asleep, at all times) and the secret of Michel were all very good ideas. But, a movie just can't run with some clever ideas, you need a well told story behind it, you need to know and care for the characters, you just need something this movie didn't do. I just hate it when a movie with good ideas doesn't follow through with those ideas and instead of a fantastic movie we have a run of the mill one that will be forgotten within a few months.