Paul Blart: My Bloody Valentine
DVD Releases /
The Pajiba Staff
DVD Releases | May 19, 2009 | Comments (16)
Fanboys: After a couple of years on the shelf, Jonah Hill and Kristen Bell’s Fanboys finally came out with very little fanfare, for good reason, as Dan writes: “Kyle Newman’s Fanboys is a sweet mess of a film, an earnest comedy about geeks (and almost completely specifically for them) that suffers too much from shoddy technique and an imbalanced tone, especially during the clumsily expositional first act. The movie is successful when it sticks to the social misfits at the center of the story and allows their love of genre storytelling to inform their actions, dialogue, and fights over the finer intricacies of George Lucas’ creative universe. Because of its subject matter — a group of young twentysomethings in 1998 band together to steal a copy of Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace — the film has to necessarily take playful swipes at Lucas’ film because of the backlash and criticism it ignited in the fan community, and Newman and screenwriters Ernest Cline and Adam F. Goldberg aren’t about to pretend that movie was anything other than a massive artistic letdown. However, their willingness to examine the weaknesses in the things they love and the real reason behind obsessive fandom doesn’t alleviate the burden of a weak script filled with often cartoonish set pieces, no matter how much they wish it could. Fanboys means well, and tries hard, but the filmmakers would have done well to remember that they can either do, or do not; there is no try.”
My Bloody Valentine 3D: One of the better so-bad-it’s-good movies in recent memory. Dustin writes, “But then there’s My Bloody Valentine 3D, a movie that’s monumentally awful. But it’s the most fun I’ve had at a horror movie since the last Final Destination flick. What’s particularly troubling about My Bloody Valentine, however, is that I can’t tell if the director, Patrick Lussier (White Noise 2: The Light, Dracula 2000) is either a genius or spectacularly incompetent. The result, here, is the same: Horrendous acting, unbelievably awful plotting, and bloody fucking awesome death scenes. That’s the 80’s way, y’all. You know you’re watching a special kind of movie when a white crowd — and not just white, but Maine white — is yelling at the screen. The typical audience reaction: A bunch of teenagers laughing their fool goddamn heads off for 90 minutes and walking out, exclaiming “Worst Movie Ever!” In other words, My Bloody Valentine is sucktastic. The body count is huge, the gore is off the hook, and the plot is hilariously nonsensical.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop: Paul Blart was simply so bad it was bad, as Dustin writes: “Paul Blart: Mall Cop is offensively bad. And it’s not the fat jokes that are truly offensive (though, those are, too), it’s just offensively unfunny. And I say that as someone who genuinely, though inexplicably, likes Kevin James. He’s kind of self-deprecatingly charming. Semi-amusing, even. He made Hitch almost worth watching. He just fell into the wrong crowd, unfortunately. That crowd being Adam Sandler and the Happy Madison crew, so that now even when he “writes” his own material (as he does here, if you can call it that), he still has to cast a few of the Happy Madison regulars and use one of its regular “directors,” Steve Carr (one of the ten worst in Hollywood). The result: A bland, overly-lit, formulaic action-comedy that’s so ungodly tepid that I can’t even work up any self-inflicted pain jokes to describe the experience.”
Valkyrie: Dustin liked it. You got a problem with that? “Valkyrie is a seriously grim film one about a Very Important Event. Valkyrie may suffer from McQuarrie’s refusal to streamline the story, from the filmmakers’ refusal to get inside the minds of the participants and their motivations, and from the lack of any meaningful character development, but Operation Valkyrie wasn’t about the individuals and Singer wasn’t trying to create a character you could fall in love or sympathize with. From the perspective of history, Operation Valkyrie was more than the sum of its individuals; symbolically, it suggested that Germany during World War II had a little more underneath the hood than the Big Evil Dictator logo emblazoned upon it. The disappointment in the Operation lay less with the plight of the individual men and their failure to assassinate Hitler, and more in their failure to alter history for the better. Bryan Singer, likewise, wisely attaches more significance to the resistance than to the resistors, and the result is not a Tom Cruise Film, but an entertaining, suspenseful thriller that just happens to star a Tom Cruise.”
Friday Night Lights, Season Three: For those of you who haven’t got caught up yet, or who might have quit during Season Two, give this season a chance. It’s nearly as good as Season One. I’m actually making my way through it a second time right now, and it’s fantastic. Though, and this is a spoiler if you haven’t made it through the season, in a disappointing turn: Taylor Kitsch has said that he’s returning to Season Four, saying that Riggins just doesn’t belong in college. That’s too bad — he may be one of the best parts of the show, but I think it was time for him to move on.
Comments
Posted by: Brian at May 19, 2009 5:29 PM
"Friday Night Lights" - On order from Amazon for a while. Should be shipping today.
"True Bllod" - also out today. First disc has been mailed by Netflix. Looking like a good TV week