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Movie Review: Nacho Libre

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Nacho Libre absolutely sucked! That might have been the worst “movie” that I’ve ever seen. There was no story, there was no point to making the movie. And it was short. WAY too short to spend $9 on going to see.

Those assholes claim that the thing is an hour and forty minutes long. Bullshit. We entered the theater to buy our tickets at 5:40, I went to the bathroom, my friend went and got some snacks, and then we entered the theater. Of course there were at least 7 minutes of commercials and another ten minutes of previews and then BAM! the movie starts. So it’s easily 6:00pm by the time the movie started… and when the closing credits were already rolling I asked my roommate what time it was and I saw his cell phone – 7:20pm. Maybe the “Super Duper” DVD release will have the missing twenty minutes, but that’s another story.

As a side note – this is happening more and more. When we went to go see the David Spade movie with Napoleon Dynamite in it a few months ago, the same thing happened – at least a half an hour was shaved off the movie.

Now for the movie itself, it was just terrible. The standard necessities such as character development and, you know, a plot were no where to be found. Here’s the movie in a nutshell… Jack Black loves wrestling, he’s a friar, he becomes a wrestler.

That’s it.

It’s not that funny, either. The only genuinely funny part comes at the end of the movie in the big match where Jack Black flies like a bird to trounce on top of his opponent. There is no backstory, there is no attempt to build to a climatic conclusion, there is nothing at all worth going to see.

Quite frankly, I want my money back. I said to my roommate before, the entire movie plays like one inside joke where only the writers know what the joke is…though I think I have it figured out. The inside joke has got to be that they could write a movie about absolutely nothing and because Jack Black is in it (who isn’t even really that funny anyway) – people will come see it and they’ll make millions.

Funny joke, huh?

On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this movie a 0. There were no redeeming qualities at all – and the asshole, hillbilly, white trash hick sitting two rows in front of us didn’t help by clapping REALLY loud for a LONG period of time during the most unfunny parts of the movie. The theater had 15 people in it – and this fucking asshole had to be sitting there clapping himself stupid.

A complete waste of time and money.

Movie Review: Cars

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I really enjoyed Disney/Pixar’s latest offering. Cars is, of course, marketed as a kid’s movie and when one of my roommates and I went to go see it, the place was overrun with rugrats. This was actually not that bad as he and I could have a full-blown conversation in the middle of the movie without really being out of place!

Anyone who knows anything about Pixar knows that they are the absolute best in terms of rendering almost life-like three-dimensional images on screen. Cars is no exception. The movie looks phenomenal, literally. From Lightning’s (Owen Wilson) flashy shine to Doc’s (Paul Newman’s) rebuffed exterior towards the end of the movie, the designers did a masterful job of putting together a tremendous looking piece of work. And the landscapes are awe-inspiring, albeit digitally rendered.

While I highly recommend this movie and I will probably go back to see it if I can catch a $5 matinee somewhere, I did have one major problem with the core of the story. I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that Owen Wilson’s character winds up in extremely small-town America which consists of one-street’s worth of a previously bustling tourist area. Well, the “story” is that with the creation of the interstate, Route 66 (the home of Radiator Springs, the dead tourist town) is not used too much any longer. The implication? The mini-tourist towns along Route 66 are decimated by people buzzing by on the highway instead of passing through their tourism-fueled towns.

Sad and true story.

But something just rubbed me the wrong way about the Disney Corporation making a movie that pretty much scolds the public for neglecting Middle American tourist spots. Isn’t this the same company that all but killed the Heartland tourism industry by putting two mega popular theme parks in Florida and California? And weren’t highways built, in part, to facilitate mass transportation to and from these places? I also think that it’s quite ironic that people will take these highways and continue to pass these small former tourist areas in order to go to these theme parks so they can see rides and attractions about this movie…

And as far as complaining about the fast-paced lives of today, I have a problem with the company who owns ESPN bitching about this. Let’s not forget that ESPN just introduced their own mobile phone brand that gives you even more sports-on-demand options than the standard mobile phone sports service… because sometimes you JUST have to know what your favorite baseball player’s batting average was when he was in high school…

Those points aside, I thought the movie was great. The graphics rocked, the story was good, and the plot moved along well. The actors all did a great job with their voiceovers and I highly suggest going to see this movie – especially if you have rugrats that you need to entertain!

Movie Review: Da Vinci Code

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Pretty much everyone in the world has read The Da Vinci Code. It’s a decent, B-rate thriller. The religious themes in the book are fun to speculate about – especially if you know a little bit about religious history and can see the holes all over the plot. Anyway, that’s a different story for a different time!

I don’t know if I would suggest to go and see this movie only because I don’t know if the movie is worth the $9 or $10 to go see it. If you can catch a $5 matinee somewhere (they do exist!), then definitely go check it out, but this would make a great “Blockbuster movie night” in a few months when it comes out on DVD.

The movie itself is very close to the book. As a matter of fact, if you read the book over a year ago like I did, you’d think that the book and the movie are exactly the same – word for word. The truth is that there are some parts of the book that haven’t quite made it to the movie, like Sophie’s brother or the second cryptex. However, the movie is still pretty good without those parts and I’m sure it’ll be a Christmas present for a bunch of people.

Sir Ian McKellan and Tom Hanks deliver good performances. Some have been harsh on Hanks in the movie, but I disagree. It’s not easy for any actor to be given a role where over half of the movie-watching world has read the book that this character comes from! Hanks manages to give life to a generally boring character and I hope that they bring him back for the future Dan Brown movies that are in the works.

I give the movie my approval, but don’t expect to see anything more than what was in the book if you go to see the movie – quite frankly, if you DID expect anything other than what was in the book, then you’re nuts!

Movie Review: X-Men 3

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This movie seems to be getting mixed reviews all over the place. Some are pissed because they don’t like what the director did, others are happy to see a character like Beast, and others just like that they’re watching another comic book movie.

I thought that the movie was good while I was watching it. There was an interesting story and some unbelievable deaths in the movie. However, as I was watching it I began to realize that there was something sorta wrong going on here. The thing is, while you’re watching the movie, you can’t really sit and think what is wrong with the story because there is always something else going on that draws your attention.

For instance, there is a part in the movie where Professor X is killed (or so you would think unless you stick around until after the credits). Anyone who ever read the comics (I did not) or knows anything about the series (I do) knows that this is a completely ridiculous event. The guys is supposed to be this big super human mutant or whatever. I’m not quite sure how it works, all I know is that he’s not supposed to die.

The thing is, you can’t stop to figure out what the hell is going on because the house is flying and Magneto is getting his ass kicked and there’s just a big mess going on.

I don’t want to give away too much of the movie. If you’ve got the money, I would suggest going out to see this movie.

Book Review: Freakonomics

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Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt with Stephen J. Dubner caused quite a stir when it was released last year. That’s because it takes a different look at some common questions like why did crime drop in the 1990’s and do teachers cheat in the face of standardized testing?

I don’t want to go into too much of the book’s content, but I do want to say that I thought the book was a good read. It took me about 4 days to read the entire thing and that includes working and playing over Memorial Day Weekend. The book is not written in a thick, academic style so it should be appealing to all comers. Actually, the authors wrote the book with the intent to bring this new way of thinking to the masses – or at least make their train of thought accessible by the masses.

You may be turned off by this book from what the left-wingers say about it. For example, there is a passage in the book that talks, in-depth, about how legalized abortions brought on a massive drop in crime a decade and a half later in the face of experts claiming that crime was about to explode all over the United States. Some people have diminished the “economics-based” message of this passage by saying, “Freakonomics says that abortion would lead to less black babies and thus, less crime.” Well that’s ridiculous.

Read the book and you’ll see how the principles of economics actually do explain the drop in crime (along with increased police presense). The book does tend to trail off towards the end as a less than stimulating discussion about children’s names ensues. I would have put this study earlier in the book, but still, there is a lesson to be learned amid the data. The results of the name study are interesting, but rather boring overall.

I suggest this book for anyone looking to get a different view on topical issues. More specifically, I would hope that young people read this book in the hopes of getting a different way of looking at issues than “all liberals are morons” or “all conservatives are crazy.” There are, in fact, other ways of viewing the issues and Freakonomics begins to explore some of these alternative viewing methods.

What type of response has the book garnered? Well, from the authors’ own blog, we have:

…the vast majority of teenagers (and their parents) we’ve heard from have talked about how the frank discussion of various topical issues in Freakonomics have actually encouraged lots of good dialogue between kids and their parents, as well as kids and their teachers and kids and other kids.

Again, feel free to leave your comments about this book if you decide to read it. For those interested, the authors keep a blog and they will even send you a signed bookplate so you can say you have a “signed” copy of the book. Enjoy!