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daverdinj
Reviews
Compliance (2012)
A movie about stupid people being pathetically stupid, and leaving you feeling stupid for watching the whole thing.
If this movie is actually based on a true story, it is based on one of the most shameful displays of human stupidity ever, one that wasn't worth making a movie about. All of the grown adults involved in this "incident" ought to be imprisoned for being complete idiots and falling for such a ridiculous, poorly covered prank. This isn't so much about an act of injustice as it is about grown adults being stupid moronic idiots, in which case you are better off watching Jackass or something. The only strong emotion it stirs up is disdain for stupid people, and that doesn't last long because its pretty easy to get over stupid people being stupid.
I give it 2 stars because it was filmed well and the acting was good...unfortunately this was wasted on a pathetic story about stupid people being too stupid to not suck at some very basic things in life.
Premium Rush (2012)
Like Uncertainty(also with Gordon-Levitt), but with bikes and envelopes instead of pregos and cells.
The name says it all: an action film trying way too hard.
If you've seen Uncertainty, another Joseph Gordon-Levitt flick, you've seen this movie.They just left bikes out of the first one and used a cell phone instead of an envelope.
I give it a 3 because I found it humorous, and parts of it were a bit suspenseful.
I think this movie would have been better 5 to 10 years ago when bike messenger culture was a hot thing.
In the end this movie makes me even more ticked of at both bicyclists AND cops than I was pre-movie.
The Ramen Girl (2008)
Ramen doesn't make anyone laugh.
"I wanna make people laugh like you do!"
Ramen doesn't make anyone laugh.
...unless you add some peyote.
Kinda like this movie.
So why 2 and not 0 stars? Hmm... Maybe out of respect for the deceased Brittany Murphy. Maybe because it straddled the threshold of "so bad it's funny" and "just bad". Or, maybe I ate some Ramen and it gave me the giggles and now I'm all kinds of generous.
There really isn't much more to say about this movie, except that if you do watch it know you can not get a refund on the hour and 42 minutes of life you lost.
Maybe you can read a book or knit a sweater or paint your living room while this is playing in the background.
Uncertainty (2008)
Its okay. But not okay enough for me to review it without spoilers.
When it comes to the crazy side of the coin, one of two things would have solved this young couple's dilemma:
#1 Ditch the phone
#2 Turn the damn ringer off, put it on vibrate or something. Then, as soon as you confirm that you will more than likely be killed before you'd be able to get any money, DITCH THE PHONE. and then change your blasted yellow outfits. This can be done long before prego GF is forced to run miles up and down stairs and into traffic, almost guaranteeing a miscarriage.
Seriously, if you and your prego GF find a cell phone in a cab and foreigners start calling it and talking all kinds of scary mess, chuck that s--- out the window and get on with your life.
Also, if you abandon my sound advice and the two of you find yourselves running and hiding from an Asian guy with a gun, tell your prego GF to stop making so many unnecessary piercing vocal noises- because this, along with the bright yellow matching hipster outfits, makes it really hard to hide from a gunman.
Potential for a lot of suspense. But I had to constantly and viciously swat away nagging questions about their illogical behavior just to get some slight enjoyment out of this could-be suspenseful drama.
And then the movie ends, and we assume they live happily ever after out of wed lock.
Vinyan (2008)
Not a horror film, just a drama about a crazy woman getting a mud bath
Well, yeah. That says it.From the description I expected something along the lines of Children of the Corn, but in reality the scary feral children have very little to do with this movie, they just kinda show up at the end to rub mud on a naked woman's body.
Most of the movie is about the mundane, anti-climatic journey to the home of these not so scary feral children(who we only get to see briefly) so a crazy wife can have them rub mud on her naked body.
You see, a rich couple's son died not so long ago. The mom is obviously not coping well and going nuts as a result. But she convinces her husband to pack a bag with hundreds of millions of dollars so they can pay Asian gangsters and human traffickers to lead them to some forbidden Burmese district, just to make sure their son isn't alive. So for the first hour and 10 minutes people argue, there's lots of rain, someone gets shot, and there's a sex scene. 15 minutes before the closing credits, feral children show up acting kind of creepy, the husband gets killed, and yes I'll say it again... the children rub mud on the wife's naked body. And that's the end.
Adventureland (2009)
A bunch of hipsters looking and acting like hipsters but pretending to be in the 80s
Eh. It was very disappointing.
A bunch of pot smoking college grads haven't progressed past their teen angst days. Oh, and I guess it all happens in the eighties.
There were a few subtle clues to the eighties thing, such as the cars and a few pop culture references, but other than that I would have not known the movie was supposed to be set in the eighties had I not been told this by outside sources. I would have just thought it was a tale about modern day suburbanites-gone-hipster.
Hipsters like to sport 80's fashion, listen to 80's music, live off of their parents and smoke pot. The movie constantly played every big hit tune from the eighties, just like lots of movies with modern day hipster appeal set in contemporary society.So what about this movie makes it an 80's era film? Oh, I see- it's eighties era simply because it proclaims itself as eighties era...
...just like a hipster.
And the waste of talents such as Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader is shameful! Their presence gave an unfulfilled hope that this movie would be a lot more fun that it actually was, but Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg came back to remind us that Wiig and Hader were just used decoys for the dry, gloomy, semi-funny feeling the film preferred to fixate itself on.
American Gangster (2007)
Blow with more black people, Thailand instead of Mexico & Colombia, and heroin instead of coke.
I stopped watching about half way through. I'm a big fan of Blow, and after a little over an hour, I counted about 5 scenes that were just short from being exact duplicates of Blow scenes. I could have forgiven this, but the movie did a poor job of setting up the story. All of a sudden this guy decides to become a big time drug lord flying to Thailand to better the business. Why? Where'd that come from? Hm, the boss died so I think I'm going to do business with deadly Thai heroin suppliers cuz, well, just cuz. I mean, I know its based on a true story, and there were probably some plausible reasons behind his progression as drug kingpin, but I guess with all of the mimicking of Blow, I expected that part of the story to develop as well as it did in Blow. Still, fairly good acting and some parts of it kept me on my toes. Unfortunately it was not enough to keep my attention.