A Review Post While Stacey Hogs the XBox

Over Veteran’s Day weekend, we ran out and bought a replacement XBox and with it one of those new-fangled Kinect thingers. Since then it has ceased to be my XBox and is now our XBox as she has been playing the ever-living fuck out of Dance Central.

I want to get my stab on but the furniture has been reconfigured and I can’t dance so I’m gonna write up this instead.

Survivors (2008 Series)

A BBC series about a post-flu-apocalypse group of survivors and the crazy situations they encounter. Stark, unyielding. Thoroughly enjoyable. I am sad they canceled the series when they did.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

An excellent film and well-worth your time. I found it to be a fitting capstone to Ledger’s career, and probably the film he should have gotten the Oscar for.

La Mission

Clearly filmed on location, this movie had a lot of sweet cars in it. I felt it was a solid script but I’m having difficulty finding any stellar “stand out” moments other than it was a love-letter to San Francisco. The ending lacks resolution but so does life so it fits with the movie’s themes.

Personal Effects

An aging starlet and a pretty boy try to earn themselves some Oscars.

Gamer

Stacey walked in on this about halfway through and asked me what was going on and I couldn’t begin to explain the concept. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself – far from it – but in the case of this movie they did the concept a disservice by slapping an action movie on top of it.

Carriers

Another “super disease” kills everyone film, this one with Piper Perabo and Captain Kirk. While there was nothing glaringly wrong with it, I walked away feeling like this movie was a side-story to a much more interesting epic – and asked myself why we weren’t being told that story.

Altered

I guess this was supposed to be another B-level hit by the guys who brought you the Blair Witch but really this movie didn’t need to be made. The following things are bad about Altered: The plot, the writing, the dialog, the characters, the casting, the sets, the effects, the motivations, the revealed back-story. Also: they show you the alien in the first 10 minutes and it’s just a dude in a rubber suit.

Darkness Falls

This movie wanted to star Ryan Reynolds in it so bad. Interesting premise (kind of a Nightmare on Elm Street thing) and some decent effects given its budget. This is definitely a rainy-saturday rental, though.

The Code

This movie was so fucking interesting that I paused it after 20 minutes to get up and pee and forgot to press play.

TiMER

This was a cute little romcom. It wasn’t too saccharine and I enjoyed myself.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Thanks to my friend Noah, I can only ever think of this film as The Men who Stare at Goatse. Feels like it should be a Coen Brothers film; isn’t; reveals why towards the end. Still fun.

Pandorum

Crazy things in space. Tense and scary but the reveals are a bit predictable. There will be some Fridge Logic later.