Archive for September, 2009

The Pink Panther 2

  • Written by Box Office Boredom
  • Posted September 24, 2009 at 3:28 pm

A Review By Jason L. King

Starring: Steve Martin, Jean Reno, Andy Garcia, Alfred Molina, Jeremy Irons, John Cleese
Directed by: Harold Zwart
Rated: PG
Movie Released: 2009
IMDB Link

Final Grade:

Steve Martin has stepped into the role of the goofiest inspector in France with ease. The reigns of The Pink Panther franchise were turned over to Martin in 2006 which spawned a sequel in 2009. Is this Martin at the top of his game? Probably not but it is still a movie that is a lot of fun.

In the Pink Panther 2 Inspector Clouseau must team up with “The Dream Team” of the world’s finest detectives to find the famed thief, The Tornado, who has stolen fine artifacts from around the world including the famous Pink Panther diamond.

This film sports a colorful collection of name actors including Alfred Molina, Andy Garcia, Jeremy Irons, John Cleese and the the list goes on. Each of them add their own bit of flair to their roles that makes the film fun to watch. I really enjoyed the fact that despite Garcia and Molina’s characters being from different countries they are as simple minded as Clouseau in many ways and sort of stumble upon the truth by dumb luck.

What I enjoy about these films is the slapstick, stupidity of the films. The films are meant to be extremely dumb and I think Martin is able to pull of slapstick very, very well. Martin takes his fill of slips, trips and falls throughout the duration of the film and gives you some good laughs at the sheer stupidity of the situations he finds himself in. Mix his physical antics with his bad french accent and his inability to pronounce words like “Hamburger” and the film will have you chuckling.

What I enjoy about the character is that someone so simple minded at some points in the film, can see the big picture at the end and piece it together. In this film, there is a very fun sequence where he is questioning the pope about having his ring stolen. In the scene he accuses the pope of stealing his own ring and selling it so he could buy a big mansion to live in for the rest of his life. After accusing the pope of theft, he dresses like him and goes out onto the balcony to recreate the crime and falls off the balcony, witnessed by thousands of concerned onlookers who believe he is the pope. And if that doesn’t trip your trigger, there is a battle of wits and deduction between Clouseau and a fellow dream team inspector (played by Alfred Molina).

One of the places where the film does go stale is the battle sequences. In the first film he is constantly trying to surprise his partner with karate moves. In this film, he is battling his partner’s two young boys. There is a 5 minute karate battle sequence that just keeps going and going on but isn’t really that funny. There is also a painful Mexican dance sequence that takes place in a restaurant that could have been trimmed down some as well.

The thing that really saddened me about the film was that there were a few sequences with some sexual references and plenty of racist epitaphs that kept this from being a full fledged very family friendly film. Keep in mind though, these are PG rated references and the Clouseau character is reprimanded for his intolerance but they are still there. The sequences are a double edged sword. On one hand, they are offensive at times but on the other hand one could look at it as a lesson inside of the film. Clouseau is told he is intolerant and he has people throughout the movie teaching him that people from all different cultures, races and gender can bring something different to the table.

All in all, I enjoyed The Pink Panther 2. If you liked the 1st, you’ll like the 2nd. If you haven’t seen the 1st you don’t need to see it to see the 2nd. Is it Steve Martin’s greatest performance? Of course not. I think “The Jerk” is easily Martin’s best work. The Pink Panther films are just some fun, family comedy films that are worth checking out.

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Filed under: Comedy, Family, Movies

Point Break

  • Written by Box Office Boredom
  • Posted at 3:22 pm

A Review By Jason L. King
Starring: Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Rated: R for violence, language and brief nudity
Movie Released: 1991
IMDB Link

Final Grade: <

I really don’t remember the 90’s the way they were portrayed on film. I remember some of the fads, like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice battling it out for top record spots, I remember Poison and GNR and who could forget Nirvana. I remember using words like radical and awesome, tubular and bossanova (well maybe not a few of those) but I don’t remember them sounding stupid at the time.

This last week I had a chance to rewatch Point Break. Point Break is an action film set in the 90s about an FBI agent named Johnny Utah (Reeves) who is investigating bank robberies that are believed to be conducted by a group of surfers. He befriends a hardcore surfer, Bohdi (Swayze), who likes to live life and waves to the fullest. But as the evidence starts to point in Bohdi’s direction can Johnny Utah see the case through to the end.

Upon watching this a second time I realized that The Fast and The Furious was Point Break with cars instead of surf boards. There wasn’t much difference. The studios even picked terrible actors to play the leads (Keanu and Paul Walker). The film’s reek of similarity but I think that Point Break actually works a bit better.

Swayze does a good job in the film, but Reeves is awful, almost beyond awful. Keanu always sounds a bit dumb in films but this one is over the top. I always assume that there is at least one point in the film where Keanu says something so stupid that it takes you out of the film (“I know Kung Fu”- Matrix or “It’s Been an Honor to serve with you on this field of battle”- The Replacements). Problem is Keanu opens his mouth in this film and you are just waiting to wince in pain from the stupidity. Perhaps this is because of the nicknames of the surfers and the slang that was popular at the time. This definitely is hard to keep a straight face through. At one point Swayze is telling Reeves that that “Other dude, Warchild, he’s not right. He’s all about getting radical.” How they cover up Keanu’s bad acting is by putting him next to his partner, Gary Busey who seems slightly more insane that Keanu.

But where Point Break does suceed is as an action film. You have gun fights, Surfing, Bank robberies, sky diving with no parachutes…you know “radical” stuff. In all seriousness, the film is some good old solid action. It’s a fun escapist action film that is worth a look at. If you go in expecting the greatest thing ever printed on film, of course you will be let down. If you are looking for something to entertain you for a few hours, put Point Break on your list.

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Filed under: Action, Movies

A funny thing happened on the way to the moon

  • Written by Box Office Boredom
  • Posted September 23, 2009 at 4:17 pm

A Review By Jason L. King

Starring: Cleverly construed stock footage
Directed by: Bart Sibrel
Rated: Not Rated
Movie Released: 2001
IMDB Link

Final Grade:

Hold on everyone: Kanye might be right, and I’m not just talking about Beyonce having one of the best videos of the year (Sorry Taylor). The Government did administer AIDS and George Bush really does hate black people. Kanye’s co-conspiritors Rosie O’Donnell and Jesse “The Body” Ventura have shown me the way of “the truther” movement and how the government were secretly behind 9/11. Yup, I’ll believe all of that the day that I find evidence that flying pigs were really behind attacking Pearl Harbor.

Unfortunately in the world there are wingnuts and nutjobs in every spectrum of the world. Political junkies have the liberal wingnuts who think Bush and cronies are oil stealing, war profiteering nuts and right wingers think Obama is just shy of having death panels starting tomorrow. If you listen to Hannity, (3 hours a day, every day…that’s all he asks! (no thanks Sean!)) we are on the slippery slope to the end of mankind. On the flip side Michael Moore and Kieth Olberman will tell you how the world is ending from thier perspective. The point is, there are nut jobs out there. Nutjobs can be entertaining (Fahrenheit 9/11 was fun!!!) but at the end of the day they are just that…nutjobs.

An aquantiance that I happen to know (for the sake of fun, let’s call him “Shanky”) so graciously interrupted a conversation I was having with another person. I was explaining to this other person that my wife’s grandmother was a depression era packrat who saved everything including old newspapers. Upon her death, cleaning out her house was a bit of a chore. We found old newspapers for the Kennedy assassination and the moon landing which my wife and I saved to some day pass on through the family. (The paper also has a nice article about Ted Kennedy drowning someone for those who forgot that story about the liberal lion.) Shanky awkwardly walks up, butts into the conversation and starts to lecture me on every conspiracy theory of the last century. I heard it all, from 9/11 Truther talk, Faked moon landings, Swine flu was created to boost sales in Tamiflu (as a way to clear out the expiring supply- which we do every 12 years with a pandemic), We didn’t win the cold war with Russia (instead we gave the Russians a space shuttle to keep them hush hush about an attempt to steal their sattelite.), we’ve dropped nuclear bombs on ourselves after the Rosewell incident to make us alien resistant (silly guy, I’ve seen Signs…we just need water!), Cheney tortures Arab children in his basement… you know the usual stuff. I escaped after a half hour of lecture and blank starring thinking that it was over. Shanky approached me a week later by running me down and handing me a copy of A Funny thing happened on the way to the moon. He told me once I watched this film my eyes would be open about the vast government conspiracy and I would be a changed man. Still unopened, I took the film home and since I at least had to open it to make it look like I watched it I cracked open the shrink wrap seal. I noticed on the back cover it was only 47 minutes long, so I figured why the hell not?

This review turned into a Trevor Soderstrum movie review that is all focused on Politics and not on the film and since that is his gimmick and not mine, let’s leave the Bush bashing, Obama loving fun to Trevor and get on with the review (Side note: If you don’t know who Trevor is, see the notes at the bottom of this page). There is probably a reason I am babbling about everything but this movie and that is because there is nothing to say about this film.

The film is a conspiracy nutjobs haven. The film tells us that entire moon landing and following NASA projects of the era were all staged fakes. The director relies on either being inaccurate, not telling the full story, or the old favorite “government always lies to us” innuendos. He jumps around claiming he has exclusive, unreleased video that is on any internet site if you do some searching. For every claim that he made, it can be refuted and refuted fairly easily when studied further. Nothing that the film spouted in it’s 47 minutes made me really wonder “what if it was fake?” The director assumes that the people watching this film are the type of people that believe everything that is told to them and do not check on the accuracy or details behind the claims.

Aside from his debunkable claims the documentarian claims that it was all a government conspiracy so NASA could spend 135 billion dollars of taxpayer money to make 9 billion dollars in revenue for those evil big businesses that were friends of friends of NASA. (So that’s where Cheney learned it from!!) He placed his lies in quick rapid fire order amidst footage of vietnam, starving children and famous figures and scenes from the times as a way to keep your mind off of actually thinking about the validity of the statements he is making.

In the end, this film is beyond garbage. Please don’t rent it, don’t buy it. Don’t give the nutjob your few bucks. You could probably find the film on google video and youtube if you want to look. I’m too lazy to look for it and you should too.

**Trevor Soderstrum is a syndicated columnist and friend of the site. In our area Trevor is the movie review guy in Toon’s, the local Ames comics paper. You can find Trevor on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and all those fun places. He’s generally an attention whore, so if you want copies of his reviews, I’m sure he’ll tell you where to get them!!

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Filed under: Documentary, Movies

Plan a Freebie Movie Night!

  • Written by Box Office Boredom
  • Posted September 18, 2009 at 7:00 pm


Update: A few new sites have been added as of 4/2/10.

Every where I have turned in the world these days, people are looking for a bargain. The troubled economy means that just about everyone has had to tighten their belts a bit and trim out the wasteful expenses. Many times the first thing to go is entertainment items. But just because the economy is down on its luck doesn’t mean that you can’t still enjoy your next movie night. There are all sorts of sites that you can watch movies and TV shows on your computer for free without breaking any laws.

Of course the internet is filled with some far shadier sites that are not legal, so we will focus on the legal ones in this article. Check out some of the links below and plan your next movie night for next to nothing. Just think, how great would it be knowing your movie night can still happen and your only cost is your favorite bag of microwave popcorn.

Totally Free Sites For Movies:
(All of the free sites require that you watch a few second ad periodically throughout the films, but they are usually quick 30 second or less spots)

www.hulu.com :If you haven’t HULU’d lately, what are you waiting for?
http://www.sling.com/: Sling is a newer site I discovered and have not had a lot of experience with. My experiences have been a bit of lag between the ads and buffer times but in a 104 minute film they did only make me watch two 30 second ads.
www.snagfilms.com :Snag Films specializes in documentary films
www.joost.com :Shares many of the same films as Hulu, but does have a few obscure others.
www.fancast.com :Another site much like Joost and Hulu.
www.crackle.com :Crackle is a great site for content if you can find it. Crackle is just VERY poorly constructed. It’s hard to find the full content that they stream. I know there is more hidden on that site than what pops up when you do a search for full length movies. I suggest using IMDB to direct you to Crackle for the full movie. I felt Crackle should be noted since IMDB re-directs or links to it but I wouldn’t make it a go to site for initial searching.
www.imdb.com :In my opinion, one of the worst ways to watch Movies, but IMDB streams content it finds and steals off other sites. If you can dream it up and type it into the search box, it will find you the cast lists and full movie if available on the site page.

Totally Free Sites for Streaming your favorite TV Shows:

www.Hulu.com:Hulu leads the way as the evil mastermind behind TV on demand. Check for your favorite show their first. Also has a collection of older shows as well.
www.cbs.com: CBS doesn’t believe in conformity and doesn’t stream on HULU like the other network sites….They post a lot of content, but their site navigation and player have always seemed sketchy at best for a slower computer.
www.southparkstudios.com : Southpark Fan? Watch Every Episode Ever for Free!
http://www.sling.com/: Sling is a newer site I discovered and have not had a lot of experience with. My experiences have been a bit of lag between the ads and buffer times but in a 104 minute film they did only make me watch two 30 second ads.

www.imdb.com : Same issues on the TV end as the movie end. I use this as a last resort.
A&E TV: Cable Channel A&E streams some of their shows on their site. Not a lot of content!
www.fox.com :FOX also streams all their content on Hulu.com which is a more user friendly site!
www.nbc.com :NBC also streams all their content on Hulu.com which is a more user friendly site!
www.abc.com :ABC also streams all their content on Hulu.com which is a more user friendly site!
www.joost.com
www.fancast.com
www.cwtv.com/ : CW/WB fans can enjoy a look at all their favorite shows. You may need to add a plug in for their browser before use.
www.syfy.com : Not a ton of content, but original shows and movies debut here.
www.history.com/ :History Channel Buff? Check out the History Channel’s full episodes
www.tnt.tv/
www.fxnetworks.com/
www.usanetwork.com

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Filed under: Articles

The Soloist

  • Written by Box Office Boredom
  • Posted September 17, 2009 at 1:37 am

A Review By Jason L. King

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Robert Downey Jr.
Directed by: Joe Wright
Rated: PG-13 for thematic elements, some drug use and language.
Movie Released: 2009
IMDB Link

Final Grade: <

The Soloist is based on the true story of an LA Times writer, Steve Lopez (Downey) who finds and befriends a struggling street performer, Nathaniel Ayers (Foxx). At first Lopez looks to Nathaniel as nothing more than a good story, a way to get his column back on top. But over the year their friendship grows, Steve and Nathaniel deal with Nathaniel’s bouts with mental illness and friendship as well as his struggle to once again play at the level he once did at Julliard.

The Soloist came out running with good intentions, and even brought in a cast that I thought could do the job. Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx bring some star power to the table, and the film seems to scream Oscar buzz even by the trailer. I was very saddened to find that the film did not live up to these expectations, or even come close for that matter.

I spent much of the movie trying to figure out why director Joe Wright felt the need to make this film seem so pretentious. We have multiple scenes we are forced to sit through with arial views of LA, with the music of a full orchestra only linked to the opening and closing notes of a crazy person’s street performance. Amidst that we have many poorly strung together, chopped up scenes that just didn’t flow well for me. Maybe the old saying “It got messed up in the editing room.” applies here, but the film felt jumbled and not quite complete.

One of the other things I found distracting is Robert Downey Jr. Perhaps it is just me, but I have a very hard time thinking Robert Downey Jr. wants to help anyone in the world aside from himself. Now don’t get me wrong, I love old Iron Man as much as you do; but is Tony Stark going to go an befriend an poorly dressed street performer with schizofrenia? I don’t think so. And if you thought Downey was acting in Iron Man, here’s a news flash: He was playing Robert Downey Jr. (it just so happens Tony Stark is Downey in comic book form). As for his counterpart in Jamie Foxx, I felt the performance was strong, very strong actually but the character gets old very fast. Nathaniel kind of wears out his welcome about 3/4 of the way through the film and by the end, I really don’t care how things end up.

I wanted to enjoy The Soloist and was really looking forward to watching a great drama. Instead, I just got another forgettable film that you should forget to rent.

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Filed under: Drama, Movies
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