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The Double (2011) – Movie Review
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Category Archives: Movies
Four Christmases (movie review: Comedy)
Brandee, Jack, Bella and I watched the movie Four Christmases (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369436/) yesterday and this will be my first movie review in the Comedy genre.
This was a good flick if you are looking for a decent comedy. It was very slap-tastic at points but humorous and a well thought-out plot. It was quick moving as to not bore me like so many other movies do that don’t have enough good content.
The story is simple. A couple visits their four sets (each parent is divorced) of families for Christmas. I didn’t get a chance to watch the movie straight through so I’m sure I missed some good parts however I did get to see much of the film and I liked what I saw.
The characters all were very believable and funny. In particular I remember the scene when Vince Vaughn’s character was introducing his father’s side of the family to Resse Witherspoon’s character for the first time. The brothers were named Dallas, Denver and Vince was Orlando. They were all named after the cities that they were conceived-in! Also, Dallas and Denver were like amateur UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) fighters or something. There were the totally stereotypical ‘meatheads’ and were constantly antagonizing each other.
The cast of characters was impressive and two of my other favorite actors, Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek, played outstanding roles. Overall this was a fun movie to watch on a lazy day after Thanksgiving. It also was a good tone-setter for the upcoming holiday season and put a smile on Brandee’s face so I deem Four Christmases worthy of 8 Steelers Stars.
The Cabin by the Woods (2011)
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This was surely “one for the ages”. The wifey and I decided to order a pay-per-view ‘horror’ movie tonight and just relax. Cool and cool, and horrific is absolutely what we got!
This movie started with no clear plot that I could figure out what-so-ever. It was just plain gratuitous violence. Blood and guts, severed heads, screaming and yelling and all the typical things you’d see at the END of one of these types of movies. So, I must admit, this movie had me intrigued to being with.
Okay, I can deal with the silly, and totally ridiculous violence since that is what we bargained for, but through-out the movie they would include intermittent scenes of some type of Command Center/Control Center. We were thinking like “what the hell is this for?”, because it seemed so random but it appeared they were building a plot of some sort. It turns out that the Command Center wanted people for being “young”. Five young people had to die according to Sigourney Weaver. Yep, she stooped to a new low for sure with this bomb of a flick! She made about a five minute on-screen appearance and that was the most true insight to any sort of plot I could find in the movie.
All I could figure out with this movie (or that I cared about) was that the mega-pot smoking dope-head was somehow immune to the effects that this Command Center was infecting people with. That minor detail went unexplained as I recall also.
Anyhow, there were some good things in this 1 ½ hours of yuck though. Namely, it made the wifey jump out of her skin several times which was quite hilarious. It left her cuddlier with yours-truly (or at least I would like to think so).
In the end, I just quizzed her on if she understood the plot anymore or any less than I did. She said she was as confused as me so I will leave it at that. It’s unfortunate because at about one hour into the movie it looked like the movie was building to be something interesting. I assure you – NOT!
This movie is a true stinker and gets only three Steelers Stars.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
UPDATE: I finally watched this movie a few times, accidentally, and my initial reaction was correct in that this flick is nothing more than a stupid thriller. No interesting plot, no good storyline, and just lots of gore. If you are looking for a mindless waste of 2 hours or so, then this is right up your alley. Overall, I didn’t expect much so I’m not disappointed in Texas Chainsaw Massacre but I think there could have been a really good movie out of this.
We started watching this movie…….ummmm, late…not sure how much we missed then I got distracted and can’t fairly evaluate the movie. Therefore, I forgo the review for now and will update later.
It was, however, good “background noise” and the goriness was awesome from the few moments I watched. Looking forward to a complete viewage!
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
I’ve been a casual “Apes” fan for decades but never truly a hard-core fan because of the mindless plots or poor costumes that were obviously fake. They were always entertaining for me a bit but I quickly got bored with most of the movies of series.
However, I found this movie entertaining and surprisingly well-written. In particular, the acting with the human lead characters and especially the “Apes” was moving. The main “Ape” character was named Cesar and he was raised from birth to live with humans. The human that raised him worked for a company called Gen-Sys. Gen-Sys was testing some form of new drug on the effects to increase intelligence and energy among animals, including humans and Apes, obviously. Cesar was a calm and cool character until one of the ‘handlers’ in the Ape-exhibit, that he was sent to after attacking a human, started mis-treating the animals by provoking them and sticking them with electric cattle-type prods. This human he attacked was sort of a mis-understanding that I won’t detail in this blog post so you can watch, and or read it, for yourself if you are interested.
What I particularly enjoyed about this movie was how Cesar didn’t rush into the ultimate confrontation with the humans, which you knew would be eventually inevitable. He took his time to slowly, yet surely, recruit his fellow Apes for the revolt. One of his main allies in the revolt was a large orange orangutan who also knew sign-language just like Cesar did. It was cool that although Cesar was clearly smarter than all the other Apes, he was careful to take time to get them involved when they were finally ready for action. For example, he was feeding them chocolate chip cookies to gain their trust at one point.
In summary, both my wife and I found Cesar inspirational. It was just a fun story.
“Cesar is home” was the last phrase of the movie and then Cesar went and blended into the San Francisco Bay Area forest.
The movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) was worthy of 7 Steelers Stars, in my humble opinion!
