The Raven
While I Nodded, Nearly Napping, Suddenly There Came A Crapping Official Website |Â Trailers & Mo
R | 111 min
With the success of those mostly sucky, kinda watchable Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes flicks, it was only a matter of time before some other ye olde classic literary figure got the hyperetic overblown big screen treatment.  Apparently it was Edgar Allan Poe‘s turn to create riches, which makes sense, since the master of the macabre has endless fodder in his cannon to make a big boom boom.  So why then does James McTeigue‘s Raven feel so un-Poe-tic, and makes for a mostly big boo boo????  Hactually, it’s no real sirprize tat all, considering that James McT’s the same guy who took V Is For Vendetta and made it L Is For Lames-ies
Thanks to John Cusack‘s energetic performance as EAP, The Raven is sorta kinda a little bit watchable, but ultimately it’s just a meandering and pointless and kinda boring made up adventure about the guy who gave Baltimore’s football team a name. So what’s the story? Well, apparently some dude is obsessed with Poe’s writing and decides to murder people, just like how people are murdered in Poe’s writings!  Hmmmm, this could sorta work as a movie thing.  Then Poe’s lady (the overly teethy Alice Eve) is kidnapped by the killer, so the stakes get doubled!  Poe aint alone in this battle.  He’s got this annoyingly scowling inspector (Luke Evans, who might have permanently damaged his brow from all the scowling he done does) leading the charge, and he will not be stopped until he can stop all of this.  Sadly, it takes way too long to stop, and the hunt for the killer juss aint all that interesting, even if the reveal of the killer is sorta kinda interesting.  Oh, and Brendan Gleeson is in this for some reason, cause why not, it’s Brendan Gleeson!  But they don’t let him be funny, which is sorta Brendan Gleeson’s thing, sorta
moral of the story – Poe is cool. Â The Raven, not so much. Â Eversnore!
Bitched At Swirth: when you can’t get Jake Gylennnahhaallllalalllnnal, get Carter Oliver Jackson-Cohen
Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges
The Raven flaps & yaps its wings today at a theater near jews
You’d think movies that revolve around all-girls schools should be the greatest thing ever, but the results have sadly always proven otherwise. Â Off the top of our cloudy heads, we can only think of three recentish entries (Cracks, St Trinian’s and Lost &Â Delirious) and they all failed to live up to any possible awesomeness caused by putting nothing but girls in one place to learn… HOW TO BE HOT AND KISS OTHER GIRLS!!!!!!! Â Crap, how do we save this genre!??!?!
Enter Mary Harron, of I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page technical awesomeness, but not exactly the mos awesomiestest of movies (if you think the American Psycho movie is awesome, you’ve obviously never read the book.  Yep, we did.  it’s one of 2 we’ve ever read besides Dianetics).  Surely Harron could take Rachel Klein‘s Moth Diaries novel and make something novel out of it, no???  She tried, but ultimately no
Moth Diaries is about girls at an all-girls school, who girl it up, and then things get crazy, sorta, not really.  There’s good girl Sarah Bolger (probably one of our moist flavorite young actresses going) and her bestie Sarah Gadon, and their other gal pals, starting a new year of wearing hot schoolgirl uniforms and messing about, BUT, this new school year’s a lot different since Scott Speedman Lily Cole arrived on campus.  Soon, friendships will be tested, girls will leave school and some people will die!!  Why?  Well, you see, Lily Cole’s not like the other girls.  She’s cold and creepy and mysterious, and scary as f%&k.  No, really, she is.  It’s humanly possible that we’ve never been more scared by an actress playing a character than we have by Cole playing Ernessa.  First off, Cole is very awkward looking in general.  She’s ungodly tall, has nightmarish eyes, and may be from the planet Uranus.  Second off, in this movie, they dyed her hair and eyebrows + darkened her eye color, so on top of what she looks like normally, which is abnormal, she’s like 999348283 times morerer abbynormal looking.  Third off, her character may or may not be a vampire, dead, a lesbian, a moth and/or a diary.  That’s a lot for her to take on, and a lot for our eyes to take in
moral of the story – haven’t really explained why this movie is juss OK and not so great, but it’s juss OK, and isn’t all that great. Â It feels like a Canadian made movie, which is not so shocking cause it is a Canadian made movie. Â If you don’t know what the means, it means that the movie is kinda Americanish, but there’s something not so right about it, like it was made in Canada or something. Â There’s something not right about The Moth Diaries, and it’s not juss cause Lily Cole makes us not want to have eyes. Â Not, not, not
Poster Haste: Moth Diaries breaks Harron’s streak of having some of the bestestest movie posters goings. Â here are the previous ones
and of course, one of the GREATESTESTESTEST posters EVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVER!!
Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges
Moth flutters and stutters in select cinemas this Friday, and is available on demand NOW!
We Have A Pope! And we have a mildly amusing movie about the selection of a Pope, who doesn’t really want to be the Pope, which sets off a series of sorta funny situations of cardinals doing cardinal stuff and doing normal people stuff!!!  OH THE HILARITY!  Not really, but Nanni Moretti really wishes you found it hilarious, which it probably would be, for anyone who lives in Vatican City, which is not many of us!
The flick is basically split into two parts. One revolves around the reluctant Pope (Michel Piccoli), who ‘escapes’ from the Vatican and roams round Rome, wandering and wondering about life outside of the red robes, and reminiscing about childhood and things and stuff.  The other half focuses on a psychiatrist (Moretti), whose original job was to get to the bottom of the reluctant Pope’s demons, but since the Pope fled, he makes the most of his time by keeping the rest of the cardinals entertained, even forcing them to play volleyball.  Cardinals playing volleyball, ha!!!  The Pope in every day situation bits is overly sentimental and not all that interesting, even though it probably should be.  The bits where the cardinals are playing volleyball is the only thing worth keeping score of.   Cardinals playing volleyball, ha HA!!!
moral of the story – if yer hard up for Papal humor or Papal anything, by all means, have We Have A Pope, but if you’d rather watch something more churchy and educmacational, peas peas peas watch the doc Constantine’s Sword
Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges
Pope mildly disrobes in limited release this Friday
Things with no faces go bump in the night in Juan Carlos Fresnadillo‘s uneven, but very watchable Intruders.  They bump into Clive Owen‘s daughter Ella Purnell and to Pilar López de Ayala‘s son Izán Corchero.  And there’s nothing that they or (Black Book‘s often nekkid)  Carice van Houten, priest (our favorite German actor ever) Daniel Brühl, or unfoxy, but always roxing Kerry Fox can do about it, cause the bumpings may all be in these kids’ minds, or maybe not, or maybe so?!?!?!  And how are these two bumping cases, from two different countries (and languages) related?  They must be cause their stories are told separately, but of course this is a movie, so the two will come together at the end in some sorta nifty package, right?  They do, and when they do, it’s kinda sorta nifty, kinda sorta not, but mostly confusing, and makes this frightening looking, but not all that frightening movie kinda sorta fall apart, maybe?
moral of the story – Intruders had the right ingredients to bake a tasty scary movie cake (this aint no torture porn junk), but it feels kinda 3/4ed baked. Â Juss cause something’s edible doesn’t mean you have to eat it, but you can
Verdictgo: a nice-ish try, so a high end Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges
Intruders invades theaters in limited release today
Before we dig not so deep into this ‘review’, here’s a recap of our tweets with our immediate ‘thoughts’ on seeing the ‘movie’ version of Suzanne Collins‘ The Hunger Games
– HUNGER GAMES???? more like BORING LAMES!!!!!!!! 999999real!!
– I love me some bad future movies above all other genres, but that was a not so good bad future movie. the future didn’t look bad enough.  apparently director Gary Ross has never seen a dystopian movie from the 70s
– There’s more excitement contained in 5 minutes of an AMERICAN GLADIATORS episode than there was in 7 hours of HUNGER GAME movieage
-Â HUNGER GAMES the movie hinges on Jennifer Lawrence‘s ability to emote. she can’t and the movie is thus emotionless
-Â HUNGER GAMES really needed some vampire baseball action. Â [also]Â needed more boobs, fried chicken and ZODIAC
– things I liked about HUNGER GAMES – Stanley Tucci & his hair’s performance, Wes Bentley‘s devil beard, and the ending cause it meant movie was over
– I wish Katniss volunteered to watch THE BORING LAMES in my place
-Â I have a bad feeling that parents are going to start naming their kids Katniss and Peeta
– What happens in HUNGER GAMES sequel – Lenny Kravitz opens a salon? Kiefer Sutherland farms berries? Haymitch & Juliette Lewis go on a murder spree?
You are now exiting tweetville, and entering the ‘review’ of the ‘film’
As you can tell, we loved The Hunger Games!!!! NOT!!!! Â But we didn’t hate it (PROMISE!). Â We just don’t understand the appeal and big deal being made about this movie. Â Sure, the books are probably bettererand morerer entertaining, but books are for people who can read, and movies are for people who like their stories wrapped up in 2 hrs so they can see more movies than you can read books. Â Anywho, this is not a good movie. Â It’s not bad, but it’s not good
Battle Royale, Running Man, blah blah blagg, you’ve heard it before, and again and somethen, but it’s true, The Hunger Games are lesser versions of them.  See those.  Don’t bother with HUNGER TAMED.  Why?  Cause there’s nothing to The Hunger Games movie.  There’s no danger (you know the heroine and her hero-ish friend Josh Hutcherson are gonna live), no drama (unless you’re concerned if bland-o Alexander Ludwig will ever act again), or any sense of anything (it’s like the future in one of them AT&T ‘You Will’ commercials with special FX that look like they were created on a Commodore 64.  no offense to those AT&T commercials, but that was the future according to the early 90s and the last time we checked, the early 90s are over)… and yet, it’s still sorta kinda watchable, even though the Games don’t start until 80+ minutes into it, and about 90 minutes needed to be cut from the whole thing
So what is good?  Tucci as that giddy Oompa Loompa looking TV announcer (it’s the only creepy cool thing about the entire movie, in a Richard Dawson Running Man awesome kinda way), Donald Sutherland‘s voice (duh), Elizabeth Banks‘ wardrobe (maybe?), the fact that Woody Harrelson is in it so young audiences will know of him for future movie going experiences (although he does better mentor work in Game Change, which also has morerer cutthroat gaming than anything in the con game that is The Hunger Sames), and Isabelle Fuhrman is in it too, although not nearly enuff.  She’s adorable, and was so evil in that movie where she was evil.  She’s not nearly evil enuff here, then again, nothing here is, and that is why we don’t HUNGER for these GAMES.  A movie about kids killing each other should be tense and scary and sinister, not none of the above!!!!
Oh, you wanted to know the plot?  It’s like a bad future America, although it doesn’t seem so bad.  It makes 1984 look like our actual 1984.  Every year there’s this big thing called The Hunger Games where a boy & a girl from each of the 12 districts are selected and compete in a water-downed Running Man Battle Royale so that people will like watch it on TV and not revolt or something.  So our girl in this game is some girl with a really stoopid name – Katniss, and the boy from her district is VelPeeta or something.  They aren’t exactly BFFs.  In some flashback, she was hungry and he threw her some bread in the mud, while it was raining!  OH MY!!!  BREAD!!!  MUD!!!!  RAINING!!!!  Anywho, the two get all like dolled up by make-up artists and get advice from drunk former winners and they be in the big city where trains are fast and it all looks like a shittier CGIier version of Coruscant, and all the people are kinda dressed like Clockwork Orange‘s singing sophisto lady from the TV station.  But before the games begin, the kids get trained in a zero-energy filled training sequence.  Then VelPeeta admits he has a crush on Katnipp, and then the games begin, and within like 2 minutes of the games, like 1/2 the kids are dead, and then the rest of the movie takes place in a forest, which isn’t very futuristic, and then they play cat and mouse games that aren’t amusing to anyone (involved or watching), and then Kattnappp whistles to birds, and then more kids die and then some don’t, then there’s a cave scene, and whatever, and then the games end.  CAN YOU GUESS WHO SURVIVE(s)!?!?!?!?!?!?
moral of the story – this could have been an awesome movie, but the guy who made Pleasantville not as awesome as it could have been does or DON’Ts it again.  this is the same guy who made Seabiscuit, and can’t remember much about it, cept there was a horse and Peter Parker rode it and they both overcame the odds to win the Hunger Games
even this shitty 80s movie about a bad future was more betterer and more evilier and more watchable than The Hunger Games, even though this movie is unwatchable
…But Seriously: this one still photograph has more bad future TV show deathgame beyond bestness than the entireness of the The Hunger Games movie
Verdictgo: Very Little Merit AND No Stinkin Badges
Games is currently running afoul at a theater near jews
and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…
nope, this photo aint from Hunger Games either. Â it’s from a real movie where kids gun down each other
27. Apr, 2012 
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