Reviews for July, 2009

Failure To Launch

Filed under F - DVD Movie Club

Surprisingly, Matthew McConaughey plays a charming womanizer who is topless as frequently as possible in this film. Oh wait. The actual surprise here is that he picks up Sarah Jessica Parker, who is like 150 years old and looks like a horse. He would’ve been much better off going after her better-looking roommate, played by Zooey Deschanel, who is such a cutie. Matthew Mac provides some inspiration for all the 30+ year old guys out there who still live in their mom’s house. It’s still possible to date women, but for goodness sakes, move out already. An entertaining flick that gets a 3.5 from me.

The Boondock Saints

Filed under B - DVD Movie Club

Definitely in my Top 10 all-time favorites (I’ve also seen this film on a “worst films of all time” list before, so go figure). For thousands of years, people have killed other human beings and felt justified by the perceived affirmations of their respective deities. In The Boondock Saints, two Irishmen from Boston feel called by God to gun down tons of people in a bloodbath on the most grand scale imaginable. This is a fun movie for those who enjoy films with a fairly straightforward plot and lots of violence.

Smoke

Filed under S - DVD Movie Club

Cigar shops smell really good, so this would have been a much better film if I could’ve watched it in smell-o-vision. But since I couldn’t, it was just about average. The stories of several characters’ lives intertwine as they deal with struggles from their pasts. Some fairly intense moments followed by some not-so-great ones made this a mixed bag, but the acting was very good and some big names grace the film including Harvey Keitel, Forrest Whitaker and William Hurt.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Filed under T - DVD Movie Club

I went into this with really low expectations after the wide range of opinions I’d been given on it. As a whole, the film doesn’t match up to its predecessor, but it still boasts an impressive set of special effects and some wicked action sequences that display them more than adequately. Shia LeBeouf returns as Sam Witwicky, and Megan Fox returns as his good-looking girlfriend whose role in the film is to run around in slow motion and look hot. She did a pretty good job of it, I thought. I’m pretty much right in the middle on this one, so it gets a 3 on our scale of flames.

Dangerous Liaisons

Filed under D - DVD Movie Club

A host of morally devoid characters fill out the cast of this 18th century drama. All the names of the characters in the movie are really long and French, so I’ll just use the actors’ names to describe the basic plot. So John Malkovich plays this guy who is the biggest womanizer ever. Glenn Close tells him that he can sleep with her if he successfully seduces her niece, played by Uma Thurman. Glenn Close wants to take revenge on the man Uma Thurman is supposed to marry, who used to be her lover. So John Malkovich does just that, and then he also manages to seduce Michelle Pfeiffer, only this time he falls in love with her. He goes back to Glenn Close to claim his prize for seducing Uma Thurman and some ridiculous drama happens. Will John Malkovich actually win the wager? Will Michelle Pfeiffer keep on loving him? Why has Glenn Close looked like she was 80 years old ever since she was in her late 30′s? Tune into this movie to find out… actually it’s pretty dramatic, but not very edifying, if you ask me.

The Color Purple

Filed under C - DVD Movie Club

Whoopi Goldberg was in this movie along with Danny Glover, so you know it had to be a powerful one. Very long but very heartwarming, it follows the story of a girl whose incestuous father basically sells her off to marry an abusive sharecropper in 1930′s Georgia. She has already borne two children by her own father at this point, but he takes them both away from her as soon as they are born. The film’s timeline progresses until she is an old woman and outlines the events that happen in her difficult life.

Safe

Filed under S - DVD Movie Club

One of my top five most pointless and insignificant films of all time. I’ve watched a lot of movies in my life, and I’ve got just a few hundred of them reviewed on this website. But “Safe,” which features Juliann Moore as a crazy weirdo, is one of the worst. Actually I can’t think of very many movies, if any, that are worse than this. So this lady goes insane and thinks that the world is slowly killing her, so she goes to stay at this place in the desert for other insane people who are just like her, and then the movie ends. I was waiting for something to happen that wasn’t totally useless, but then it ended. It was the worst! I’m giving this movie the first ever Incend.net ZERO rating on our scale of 1 to 5.

Once Upon A Time In America

Filed under O - DVD Movie Club

An epic film spanning nearly seven decades and directed by Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone, Once Upon A Time In America is a movie about a group of friends who grow up on the cold, hard streets of New York City. They are ushered into lives of organized crime in the mob scene, where they experience backstabbing, greed, and the many vices that go along with the lifestyle. Even though the film was like a billion hours long (actually it was just under four), it didn’t seem like it at all. If you’ve got the time to rent this movie on DVD, sit down and watch it. A very enjoyable journey awaits you.

The Ice Storm

Filed under I - DVD Movie Club

This was kind of a depressing movie, but the story and characters provide an interesting glimpse into early-1970′s America. The Ice Storm is about a bunch of people who all hate their lives, so they experiment with various activities involving morally and socially objectionable behavior. The most interesting part of this film is that it captures a piece of the early film careers of several young actors and actresses who would later go on to have great success in the industry: Elijah Wood, Christina Ricci, Tobey Maguire, and Katie Holmes.