Movie Reviews à la Conway

I'm gonna see if I can get behind this or not. Just an experiment to be honest, be it in writing or just in a critic point of view.

So now, ladies (Yeah right) and gentleman, I give you Movie Reviews à la Conway, the result of a movie I felt needed to be discussed and a passion I happen to have for writing, sometimes well sometimes poorly.

My rating system will be sporadic and random, between the 5 star system, the thumbs up system, the 1-10 system, or the "6 out of 4 boner" system.

If you want me to review a movie then go ahead and give me a request and I may or may not honor your wishes depending on how horrible it is (I like the REALLY horrible ones).

Coming up:
Rango
A boy and his dog
Rubber

So to start things off I'll post my thoughts on my most recent film outing.

Cowboys & Aliens, but no black dudes cause they no funny

Spoilers of varying degree may follow, read at your own risk.

I went into this movie expecting something perhaps a tad silly, I mean its a movie about cowboys fighting giant aliens from some distant planet over one of our planets most useless resources. Pretty retarded on paper, maybe half as retarded in execution.

As we first meet our hero he has no recollection of where he might be, to his credit Daniel Craig makes for a good cowboy despite being the crazy Englishman he his (Although that guy who plays House does it better). Also to his credit I thought he was Harrison Ford for half the movie thinking "Damn he looks good for being as old as my grandfather!" sadly I was mistaken.

The film itself was actually a little heavy on the talking for a film about shooting down spaceships with a 6-shooter, instead choosing to engross you with a heavy amount of character development. We meet the lone cowboy with the mysterious past, the kindly gruff preacher, the spoiled right son, the down on his luck bartender, the supporting wife, the strange woman with the mysterious past, the land owning war veteran with the mysterious past, the sheriff of the town, the kid that no one cares about, the Indian tracker (Kickin' Wing from Joe Dirt) with the mysterious past and the dog with the mysterious past. I think you understand what they were going for with this movie.

After all of these characters, including some minor ones never seen again, are introduced you finally get to meet the antagonists of the film, something you see very little of for a film called "Cowboys & Aliens", I probably would've gone with "Old Western Drama with guest star generic alien guys", but I'm not in the business as it were. So after all this you expect a fight scene which really just ends up being the aliens completely wrecking the cowboys entire universe. In fact apart from the end of the film the only real action consists of aliens taking a **** on the humans and giving them a middle finger by harvesting pointless resources from their soil and our protagonist winning fights in a traditional action hero style (Bustin' heads).

To their credit the special effects were well done, the action scenes that did exist were well put together, but overall the movie had a lot of poorly done character development. To cut this review a little shorter the entire thing was character development without actually revealing any information. Everyone you relate with gets killed off early on, but everyone who is mysterious (See the entire cast) all have their origins revealed about 20 minutes before the film ends. All the tragic sacrifices they make are just passed off as "Oh that guy died, that kinda sucks, good thing I didn't care about him".

But as negative as I've been, you really appreciate where the main character is coming from, the guy is just a bad dude who wants to get done with this because he's getting to old for this **** or something. Now I can get to the really annoying part.

Olivia Wilde plays the mysterious girl with the mysterious past, and probably sums up the core of every complaint I have about the movie, she is moody, mysterious, elusive, attractive but mainly just distancing herself. Her lines throughout the movie consist of saying "Do you remember yet?" "Do you remember?" "Well do you remember?".

Every time she's dismissed with a basic "No". Sometimes the "No" is said with a gun, but it's still a no. She keeps this up for the whole movie really, she is constantly asking to get answers but never responding to any questions about herself, when her secret past is finally revealed she becomes the Mary Sue we all hate, she knows everything about everything all of a sudden and you begin to wonder why she even needed answers to any question ever. She spends the whole movie being this mysterious figure looming in the background and when we lose her (twice) I thought "Oh well".

Even the protagonist doesn't give a damn, then again he never gives a damn because he's the mysterious cowboy damnit.

So in conclusion, the flick had a lot of character development with not a lot of satisfying results, you just couldn't get attached the characters because all they had to offer was a mysterious background. As for the premise it seems like it could be good for a lot of action and a few silly quips because its about cowboys fighting goddamn aliens but it takes itself pretty seriously as a whole. The action that was to be had was superb and the main character was a great man for the role, but it has its shortcomings overall.

I give the movie 6 out of 10 Alien claws to the face.

That's all for my first review, I'm sure there's a few errors as I'm typing it up around 1 A.M. so I don't much care to go through and correct them all, if you would like me to review another movie please say so, if you want me to adjust my writing style a bit then go ahead and say so. Critique my critique is what I'm saying.

Have a good one.




Also the movie had like no black guys. What's up with that yo?

Conway wrote:

Also the movie had like no black guys. What's up with that yo?

Slavery never really made it further west than Texas/Oklahoma, so even after the Civil War there weren't really any nigs there. Probably the reason it is viewed as one of the few ideal places in US history to live.

But seriously, if you like bad movies as much as I do, you should check out one that's actually bad but for some reason is one of my favorite movies I've seen in the past year.
[Only admins are allowed to see this link]

Not as many spoilers as the last one, but still don't read it if you don't want something ruined.

All right I'm gonna have to start out saying I'm not the biggest Captain America fan, I certainly enjoy Marvel comics (although I disagree with certain plot points *cough cough* bringing people back from the dead for no reason *cough*) but I always thought the idea of "Strong guy who has a shield" sounded about as retarded as "What if Goofy from Disney got a shield and used it as a weapon".

But I'll try to put all those grudges aside and come at this with a fresh mind. I give you



So this movie was honestly pretty standard as far as Marvel movies go, you got your hero and your main villain, you got your romance interest, you got your crazy take over the world/universe/city plans. Mainly from this guy.



He's honestly the perfect villain as far as cliches go. He's evil, he looks weird, he's super strong, he's a Nazi. That's about as far as you need to go to put him on the top of the "Kill as soon as you see him list". Honestly how would you see a red faced guy walking around and be like "He seems like a nice young fellow!", but I digress.

The movie starts where most marvel movies start, the end of the movie, where they find the Captain encased in ice, this is due to a completely retarded move on the mans part where instead of saving his own life and continuing to kick *** he just decided to preserve himself so we could have the Avengers movie.


So they spend about like 20 minutes explaining to you that not only is this guy weak, but he's basically a walking death stick. He has pretty much every physical disability known to mankind but still manages to get out of bed and try to enlist, but hey more power to him. So eventually because he happens to be the luckiest man in the world considering he hasn't already died from a toddler biting his ankle, the big scientist manages to rope him into the experiment. He goes through some comedic character development boot camp scene, but all it really accomplishes is introducing the obvious love interest as being a "Tough girl", who then defaults into the basic "Seen but not heard" role for the rest of the film.


By this point we are now entering the point in the plot I like to call "Ancient bullcrap", basically meaning if they can't figure out a real plot device they just attribute it to some ancient mystical source of magic and awe inspiring goodness. So red faced dude is harnessing some weapons grade ancient bullcrap to fire out of his plastic squirt guns at people that vaporize them for no real explained reason. Captain America eventually gets across the pond after some more comedic un-necessities that pretty much serve to give him his name (By the way at this point in the film they have him holding things like a shield like six times at this point, in case you needed some foreshadowing that the movie about the guy with the shield the main character was going to use a shield at some point) and pretty much immediately sets out on a one man mission to take on a secret Nazi weapons facility to save his friend, the 400 other guys are just a bonus. He seriously sets out to get..a friend.


So this is where my main complaint of the movie comes from, basically the whole film has been buildup until this point, an hour or so of buildup, maybe more. Captain America proceeds to sneak his way into the joint to free all these prisoners, but in the ensuing fight and each one after it, they suffer from Action Movie Syndrome™.
See while Captain America is fighting people and bashing heads, they all circle around him with their plasma death ray launchers and kindly wait their turn before engaging him, one by one. Not only that but the only time anyone ever runs out of bullets is when it's inconvenient for them (Oh look I've got a hostage, I'm totally gonna shoot her.. oh wait I have no bullets after I fired like 100 without reloading lol)


So after all this we finally get to the action montage myself and the whole theater was hoping for, Captain America going around kicking *** while the bad guy just kind of..gets mad. Seriously he just kills people because he's pissed off and that's basically it. Anyway I'm not gonna waste your time because it's basically just a montage of *** kicking that was mostly sweet apart from the aforementioned Syndrome. (Plus the plastic guns. Seriously those things look like a two year old made them).

We get to the end of the movie where red dude and the Captain face off on a plane headed toward New York to drop some kind of unexplained weapon loaded to the brim with ancient bullcrap. Then again we see the whole plane is loaded with bombs marked with American cities on them, even deploying one marked "Chicago", and the one marked "New York", and they then turn into planes shaped like bombs and just sort of fly around before Captain America hijacks them and brings them back to the main plane. Their whole secret bomb weapon is some sort of tiny plane with the name of a city on them with no weaponry other than "A propeller than can grind people up". Plus the plane is still headed for new york even though the New York bomb plane is already gone. So then red man before he dies places the plane on autopilot by flipping a switch, but Captain America can't figure out a way to undo this because..he doesn't even try. Instead of letting the plane fly to New York and drop its bomb plane (Even though the designated New York bomb is already dropped, it even shows the computer having two missing bomb slots), he decides to take it into a nose dive in the ice, bringing us back to the beginning of the movie. This is pretty stupid for a man who can somehow calculate the angle of where his shield is going to hit things so it will return directly back to himself, (Which makes NO ******* sense) cant figure out that "Hey even if I can't turn off the autopilot but can still somehow control the plane, if I land it parallel to the ground, I can survive the whole plane crash!" instead he just says his teary goodbye and crashes into the ground, emotionally crippling love interest. Whatever her name is. Walking boobs. Yeah that.

For all my talking of the bad parts of the film, it was pretty decent. Honestly it's what you expect from a Marvel film, it's got your love background, your humble beginnings, your tragedies along the way (However predictable some of them may be, see the movie for yourselves folks).

I'd give Captain America for all it's ups and downs 4 out of 5 ancient Norse laser beams to the face.

Have a good one.


Also what the hell is up with little kids in movie theaters? I mean it's one thing to talk a bit a about what's going on. It's another thing to live in Texas and not have them beaten openly for their treachery. The mom of the family waited until the whole thing was over to say "You shouldn't talk in movies, it's rude". Thanks mom!

Sounds like I should watch it.
Also. [Only admins are allowed to see this image]

You must shout "STFU NOOB" when confronted by a talking child.

So this is a personal favorite of mine, I've owned the DVD since the day it came out, saw it in theaters and I watched it again today, just for you folks. But as always, I'll try to come at it with a fresh mind.

Alright let's do this. We are introduced to The Chosen One in his infant stages, being raised by some dirt poor family in the middle of nowhere, before long the main villain of the show appears and busts **** up, generally turning a tender family moment into a steaming pile of ca-ca. After a short brawl with the infant master of martial arts he decides to go the easy route and just burn that mother down. The baby makes it's way down the rocky mountainside where he is never heard from again..until now.

After partying his way through the desert our crusader is under constant attack, and employing various tactics (Such as the Gopher nunchaku, stomach removal, eye gouging, and general badassery) until he reaches the end of his journey, Master Tangs school of martial arts. Here the Master explains the source of evil itself. The Council. Of... well... Evil. They are responsible for the Chosen Ones constant struggle, and to defeat them he must defeat Master Pain, or known by his new name. Betty. Betty is guarded by a seemingly impervious protection, and under the constant watch of his bodyguard Moon Yew.

Before his quest he is confronted by a mysterious ally, warning him of Betty's mighty power, and his mighty bodyguard who lives in a meadow. After a quick sparring match to prove his skill, she reluctantly lets him go. Also she looks like this.


The Chosen One then sets out to defeat Betty and the mighty Moon Yew. Did I mention Moon Yew is a cow? I guess not. Anyway the cow is no easy task, it has lightning fast reflexes, immense power, and a large, full udder. After the Matrix style battle scene the journey continues to find Betty, master of the Iron Claw, atop his waterfall. Swinging his chain. Just swinging his chain. Oh sorry (See the damn movie already). He faces off against Betty in a 2v1 with Master Tang's old friend, but their combined efforts are not enough to defeat the mighty Betty. He dispatches them both and takes his baby booties as a memento.

This serves to put the Chosen One out on a path for revenge, but this time, it's personal.

I'm going to end it there but I highly recommend you see the film for yourself, some critics may say things like "terrible" and "Horrible" and "Should never see the light of day", but this critic says "If you liked the silliness of Monty Python's Holy Grail, you'll love the awesome that Kung Pow is bringing to the table".

Apologies in advanced for the review length/lack of jokes, but this movie really does speak for itself. Go see it yourself folks, and if you've seen it before, why not watch it again for old times sake?

Coming soon Now:


As always I'll start with a little background. I consider myself a Tenacious D fan, I own all their albums, and three dvd's, which as far as I'm aware of are all of them. However this movie is something special, it got low box office money, high ratings from fans (I'm not counting critics, those guys just hate things that are cool). Anyway. Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny.

The movie starts out awesome enough, you've got a song with Meatloaf, Jack Black (vocals) and Dio (of the Ronny James variety).


This sets the premise for the film, simple enough really. Jack is feeling stifled in his home featuring living posters of Dio who gives you advice with Meatloaf as a father..Not sure why you would hate that but hey, It's his movie. So he moves off to hollywood and there he meets up with K.G. Solo Man 5000. After some general shenanigans KG reluctantly takes young Jack under his wing, as Kage says he not only is a successful musician, he totally helped Dio write Holy Diver. The Training begins at the crack of noon.


Anyway the training goes fine and all, until K.G. gets a little call from his mother regarding a rent check. Jack soon finds out K.G. isn't a badass who jams out with Dio, more like a bald loser who just kinda sucks in general. But they soon reconcile their differences and decided to become equals. But they need a name. *** birthmarks dictate it should be Tenac. Or maybe ious D. One of the two I guess, which one you think is better?


Soon they realize that all the great rock bands have one thing in common, they all use the same damn guitar pick. So they go to a shop to try to buy one of their own and Ben Stiller is the guy who attends to them because..well..he just is (Fun fact, Ben Stiller is the security guard in the Tribute music video). He happens to be an expert on this particular guitar pick, it goes back to when a wizard summoned Satan himself, but Satan is kind of a dick and decided to try to kill the wizard instead of listen to anything the guy had to say. Luckily a blacksmith managed to chip Satan's tooth and being incomplete, sent him back to hell. The tooth was reforged into a guitar (lute) pick, and swayed the fair maidens to bed him. A century later, it showed up in the hands of all histories greatest rockers, now it resides in the Rock n' Roll museum.


So off they go, eventually stopping at a diner. Then the ultimate choice arises, trust a crazy old man who you can smell through the TV screen, or go with the hot girls to the party, miss out on the open mic night competition, and thus your rock n' roll career ends before it begins. There's a bit of a conflict, K.G. Being the fat **** he is wants the easy sex, J.B. keeps his eyes on the prize and goes for the sexy prospect of being rich and powerful. They go their separate ways and Jack takes the shoelace express. Along the way he gets really freaking hungry, as we all would, and decides to partake in some of the abundant fungi in the forest. Suddenly things become very juicy and he meets sasquatch for no real reason that I can think of off the top of my head.


After flying around on sasquatch for a while he finds himself at the museum. Using the plans given to him by the creepy old ******* (go inside the air vent on the left) he finds himself in the museum, soon Kyle gets on the radio and they make up their differences, then he discovers kyle to be in the vents with him. They then trudge onward to retrieve the pick. Here they are confronted with every movie cliche ever, namely the laser field which one must do sweet break dance moves to get through. But soon Jack finds himself in a predicament, he cannot move, but the deactivation button is just beyond the reach of his crotch. Suddenly those cock pushups come in handy, he must use the cock. USE THE COCK.

After the pick is retrieved using all skills acquired in training, they return to the big city. One eventful car chase later they manage to slip away into the city's sewer system. After trudging through some crap (literally) they manage to come out just outside the open mic club in time for their performance. Something then comes up they never though of before, who the hell is going to use the pick? Jack for his vocals or Kyle for the guitar? I mean even in an earlier dream sequence he somehow managed to share it between the two, also set a microphone on fire with his pure voice.


In their squabbling they break apart the pick, making their hard work for nothing. But the kindly open mic host tells them they don't need Satan's pick, they had Satan in them all long. Satan is that little voice in your head that makes you want to kill people and have sex all night long after all. After a tender moment for the whole family, they head inside and the mic host retrieves the broken pieces of the pick and promptly heads toward the dumpster. The duo realize maybe they could both share a piece of the broken thing and head back outside in time to see the open mic host revealing his true nature as Satan himself (the missing tooth was a hint). Just before Satan can vaporize the pair, they challenge him to a rock off in accordance with demon law, he must oblige. Either they win and he pays their rent, or he wins and K.G. becomes a sex slave. But he's not gonna win right?

Well really he does win, using a kickass masterpiece of his own. But just as he is about to vaporize Kyle, Jack deflects the mighty bolt with his guitar (that Kyle bought him with the last of their rent check). This chips his horn, meaning he is no longer complete, sending him back to the depths of hell. Now they not only have defeated the ultimate evil, paid off their rent, and saved the world. They also have a kickass new piece of inspiration.

[Only admins are allowed to see this link]

All in all Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny is a movie for the ages. Another one of those "Love it or hate it" films. Most everyone I've met has loved it and I implore you to watch it, because I'm sure it will be the same.

Overall I give it two devil horns out of Two.

This thread is becoming quite successful. In reality, though, Tenacious D is one of the greatest movies of all time, if not the greatest.

I'd rather die than watch this movie! Oh really? I figured we were already dead and this was our punishment!


But seriously Muppet's the movie.

I'm just gonna start this one off simple, you like the Muppets? At all? Look at you, you like the Muppets don't lie. Go see this movie.



Seriously the review will be here when you get back.



All right let's kick things off. We get set up with the backstory, somehow (movie magic) a Muppet is born into a human family, either that or they found some puppet on the side of the road and used their dark satanic powers to give it life. The guy doesn't fit in because you know, he's made of some sort of felt material and doesn't grow and can't really function in society because he doesn't have organs or bones or anything that makes someone normal.


But he's our hero (Main character? Plot device?) Nonetheless so onward we go. Walter feels some sort of connection to the Muppet's he can't explain, it's like they are similar to him and he can connect with them on a physical and personal level. Apparently people in this universe can't see Muppets having some sort of different physiological makeup from the rest of the human beings, they treat them more or less like you would treat anyone else, but they can still plainly tell apart a Muppet from a regular person (except for the Moppets but we'll get to them). Walters brother (Jason Segel) and his girlfriend of way too many years to not be engaged (Some lady) go on a trip to L.A. for their anniversary because Walter wants to see the Muppet studios (By the way the movie is on it's like fourteenth song by now, I wasn't aware it was a musical going in) but lo and behold, the Muppet studios from the 70's isn't exactly in tip top condition and here we meet the bad guy. Tex Richman. No really the guys name is Tex Richman, he's an oil baron, and he looks like this.


So Kermit had some sort of mega contract drawn up that has some stipulation that if the Muppets gather 10 million dollars in time they can save their studio, seriously what kind of contract has that in it? "Okay guys! I know I'm evil and I'm going to drill the shit out of your land for oil, but if you manage to amass a significant fortune, I suppose I'll let it slide." So they go on a quest to find Kermit, and through another soul searching song Kermit decides to round up the gang and put on another show. They find Fozzie performing with some rogue group called the "Moppets" and they basically treat him like dirt for all the comedic gold he produces.


Gonzo is a successful toilet tycoon, Miss Piggy is designing clothes for plus sized models in Paris or some crap, Animal has been taking anger management courses from Jack Black (Hell yes Jack Black is in this movie!) and Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker have been working on the LHC (google it). All the others are picked up via offscreen shenanigans and begin fixing up the theater right away, all this time Jason Segels girlfriend Some Lady is feeling neglected for reasons no one can figure out, seriously she's in L.A. on vacation and he hasn't said one word to her why the hell is she upset? Disregarding Some Lady the show is set to perform, everyone has a new act (Even Walter) but they still need a host! Luckily Animal has connections and knows Jack freaking Black, so they do the logical thing and kidnap him into hosting the program.


Tex Richman will have none of that and begins to hatch a scheme to shut them down, Walter worries over what to do for his performance as he is talentless, Kermit and Miss Piggy have relationship troubles and Some Lady leaves, forcing Jason Segel to choose between her and the Muppets (the choice should be obvious, Muppets all the way). I'm not out to ruin the ending (Everything works out) but this is seriously a good movie. Seriously. Go watch it right now, even if you've seen it, go watch it again I know you don't have anything better to do.

So you might think (I did at first) Walter's talent is lame as crap (whistling) but if you think about it Muppets don't have lips, so not only is his whistling amazing as golden crap, it is physically impossible, wait they don't have vocal chords, or feet, or arms with bones, this entire movie is impossible and amazing and magical and go see it.

9.5 out of Muppets.