Movie Reviews By Movie Reviews Pro

Zombieland

Rating:

Movie: Zombieland (2009)

Studio : Pariah Films

Info : Click Here

Runtime : 80 min

Website : Zombieland

Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbr8u3

Review:

It probably doesn’t help that I came into the theater already expecting it to be good because I’m a big Woody Harrelson fan, but to be frank I enjoyed Zombieland. To a point, at least.

Reese and Wernick’s zombiesploitation film features a classic scenario popularized from decades of undead films, comics, and internet memes: a virus gone bad, flesh-eating humanity, and a list of rules about what to do if you’re one of the living few. The result is a grindhousey romp through the U.S., and it is mostly successful, but there are two major faults that I must point out.

Jesse Eisenberg, who after this year’s Adventureland seems like another candidate for an Apatow film, isn’t strong enough to hold up this film as its leading role. While his pathetic demeanor provides premature laughs, he cannot seem to keep it up through the film beyond a funny run. Luckily, having Woody Harrelson seems to keep the film going along, as his buddy role as a zombie serial killer and Twinkie connoisseur is hilarious, right down to his facial expressions that not only tell you how pissed off he is, but how much he loves those yellow pastries.

The other fault lies in a midsection of the film involving Bill Murray’s mansion. I’m a big Murray fan, but at the same time I felt like the theme of surviving the apocalypse suddenly stopped at that point. In fact, every scene at that point has almost nothing to do with the apocalypse and more to do with teens doing whatever they want, at least until the climax. There’s so much potential you can cook up with a zombie-filled Hollywood, but it never gets considered and is instead replaced with Murray fandom and non-zombie things, and for such a short film it hurts the pace.

But that aside, it’s still relative fun to watch. I’m probably being partial because of Woody, but it’s definitely worth a group watch on DVD just because you can skip over that mansion scene.

-Donald Lee-

Action, Comedy, Horror, In Theaters Zombieland

Black Dynamite

Rating:

Movie: Black Dynamite (2009)

Studio : Destination Films

Info : Click Here

Runtime : 90 min

Website : Black Dynamite

Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x80qe8

Review:

Blacksploitation is back, can you dig it? Michael Jai White and the entire blacksploitation genre jumps into action in this movie that parodies everything we loved and loved to hate about these cheaply made movies. The film is littered with visible defects that people have made careers picking at, from people looking at the camera, to awkward silences, misread lines, visible boom mics, and bad editing. Combine this with every cliché you associate with blacksploitation: from Black Panther movements, to martial arts bad guys, to a singing funkadelic narrator, to murdered drug-using brothers, to the white man bringing the black man down and you have everything Black Dynamite is about. It wouldn’t even be fair to say that Black Dynamite doesn’t jump the shark unless you say it does it wielding Colt 45s John Woo style to Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries as a synchronized team of great whites swim in concentric circles by a steam catapult-powered ramp. It goes above and beyond over-the-top with a vividly cheap budget and I can’t help but love the movie for it.

Although people will likely poke at the genre of the film and the inherent racism and sexism involved with it, I honestly was reminded of the days I watched Kentucky Fried Movie’s A Fist Full of Yen, where a parodied version of Bruce Lee movies and all its conventions accurately portrayed the Brucesploitation (yes, people actually use that term) back in the day. Even better, both movies not only understand their genre, but also were smart enough to never abuse this fact unless it was to throw another parody into it.

So if you have a chance, sit your butt down and remember: doughnuts don’t wear alligator shoes.

-Donald Lee-

Action, Comedy, In Theaters black dynamite

Gamer

Rating:

Movie: Gamer (2009)

Studio : Lakeshore Entertainment

Info : Click Here

Runtime : 95 min

Website : gamerthemovie.com

Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x99ofj

Review:

Do you expect a movie made by the guys behind Crank about a future of people-controlled first-person shooters to be a masterpiece worthy of several Academy Awards? If you do, then you’re probably going to be disappointed. For the majority of you that know better, you’re probably just wondering if you are going to see something violent and crazy and if your protagonist is going to give you something as epic as his time as King Leonitas. If you are those people: you’re probably going to feel mostly satisfied.

Reconstituted plot aside, Gamer does live up to its promise in being over-the-top with copious amounts of bosoms and blood. In a way, this movie manages to make you feel the mood of a First Person Shooter where you are chunking anything meaty (beware: the shaky camera approach gets used extensively during those scenes), while giving you the sensation of a hedonist humanity that seems too jaded with excess to care about their living toys and some eccentric bits that work fairly well.

That said, I can see people griping about the storyline having a fair number of gaps of nonviolent scenes where “Kable” (Gerard Butler) is piecing together his past. Me, I liked it. These scenes usually had a somewhat artistic slant with the camera work and it did its purpose fairly effectively. For those just expecting a pure modern grindhouse, though, it may seem offset with the rest of the film, moreso with its fairly underwhelming ending that I keep reminding myself is not a homage to Blade Runner despite how much of this film’s plot is reconstituted from other recent movies.

In the end, I can not really gripe the film. It is watchable, moreso with friends, but I’d recommend this film for a DVD night.

-Donald Lee

Action, In Theaters, Sci-Fi, Thriller Action, gamer, mark neveldine, sci-fi, Thriller

Inglourious Basterds

Rating:

Movie: Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Studio : Universal

Info : Click Here

Runtime : 153 min

Website : inglouriousbasterds-movie.com

Trailer :http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9zcxu

Review:

While it will certainly not win any Oscars, Quentin Tarantino’s, Inglorious Bastards, entertains for the full 2 hours and 33 minutes. The film is divided into five chapters, which at first seem mutually exclusive, but begin to tie together towards the middle of the movie.

Though it is a war movie, there are very little gunfights. The classic “Tarantino violence,” mostly comes from the scalpings of dead Germans, body mutilations, and one overly gruesome execution by baseball bat, though none of it is comedic as usual. Tarantino also uses a series of flashbacks in order to fill the audience in on plot holes, which works very effectively and is also very entertaining. Seeing as how the rest of the movie is filled in by scheming, plotting, and a pestering German war hero, it is difficult to understand how the movie went by as quickly as it did.

The reason for this however, is that Tarantino was able to create an intricate plot with many captivating characters. The story is an alternate history of World War II, beginning with a young girl named Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), who witnesses the murder of her family, but narrowly escapes. She flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as French theatre owner. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Bradd Pitt), creates a group of Jewish American soldiers, known by the enemy as “the Basterds,” who are trained to commit quick and shocking attacks on German soldiers.

When a young German war hero, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl)—who has had a film made about him, starring him—falls in love with Shosanna, he moves to have the highly anticipated premier of his film at her theatre. With Hitler and the entire high command set to attend, both Shosanna and Aldo create separate plots for their assassinations.

This film is unlike any World War II movie ever made, however, it does have many flaws. While Bruhl’s character, Zoller, is supposed to be annoying to Shosanna, he did a better job of annoying me. Additionally, Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), an actress/double agent, who is supposed to help Raines carry out his mission—but ends up hindering it instead—seems almost completely unnecessary. “Basterds,” is not to be a Tarantino classic, but it is certainly worth seeing, even if it is just to see Pitt speak Italian in a Southern accent.

-Stephen Fox

Action, Drama, In Theaters, War Action, Drama, Quentin Tarantino, War