Vampires Suck (2010) – Rated PG-13 for crude sexual content, comic violence, language, and teen partying.
Vampires Suck is yet another spoof movie from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. To give you an idea of how bad this film is, consider their other spoofs: Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, and Disaster Movie. Now before you start thinking I’m just going to bash on all spoof movies simply because they are merely parodies, let me tell you that I do believe there is such a thing as a good spoof. The best spoofs are homages to their predecessors and end up being great on their own because of it. An example that immediately comes to mind is This Is Spinal Tap, among many others that I will not mention (that might turn into another post!). My point is, Friedberg and Seltzer have been responsible for some of the worst parodies in recent memory and Vampires Suck is no exception.
If you’re a frequent reader then you’ll recall my review of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and how I ripped it apart. Knowing this you’d think that a film that basically makes fun of how stupid these films are would satisfy a non Twi-hard. You would be wrong. The film follows the entire Bella/Edward/Jacob love triangle story with a few jokes thrown in. Sure I laughed at some parts but it wasn’t nearly enough laughter to call this film a decent comedy. A lot of the time I was laughing at how good Jenn Proske made fun of the horrible Kristen Stewart. She had the lip biting, awkwardness, mumbling, and hair tugging down pat! And the way she and Matt Lanter perfectly parodied how serious Stewart and Robert Pattinson always are was hilarious. The brooding stares, the “serious” acting…they got it all! This was unfortunately not enough to make this film any good. It is a short film (around 86 minutes, to be exact) and yet I still found myself wanting to glance down at my watch to see how much longer I’d be stuck in the theater.
I know this will probably be a cliché in many a film critic’s review of this film but, quite frankly, Vampires Suck sucked. Filmtastic review = 1 1/2 stars.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010) – Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence, and some sensuality.
I’ve seen both Twilight and The Twilight Saga: New Moon and I was impressed by neither. And it has been discussed ad nauseam that Stephenie Meyer just doesn’t know how to write well. At all. Despite all this, millions of “Twi-Hards” have fallen under the spell of Edward Cullen and Jacob Black. Is this really what this generation wants to be remembered for? Who won the ultimate battle between Team Edward or Team Jacob? Sadly, no matter how many horrible reviews these films get, and believe me they will continue to get horrible reviews, this franchise is quite the cash cow for Summit Entertainment. My point is this, my review for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse will not be glowing, but it will also not stop those crazy tweens and “Twi-Moms” from coming out in packs to drool over these young men.
For starters, the film’s tagline is “It all begins…with a choice.” Unfortunately, for the entire two hours I sat through, nothing happened. What’s the choice that has to be made? Are they referring to Bella having to choose between Edward and Jacob? Because she makes that choice pretty clear…in the first movie! Was anyone really expecting her to choose Jacob over Edward? This girl is a worthless ditz who refuses to think for herself and is just plain weak. In the first scene Edward proposes to Bella again, just like he did at the end of The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Guess what, Romeo? Her answer is still no. The girls in the crowd will gasp. Really. And you know what? He asks her multiple times. And not until the very end of the film does our “heroine” finally break down and say yes. Oh dear God, couldn’t she have said yes in the beginning and saved me the two-hour agony of sitting through this film?
There are multiple scenes where the camera is doing this shaky thing like the director of photography had a coughing fit. And it goes on for many minutes. It got really annoying. I wonder why the director chose to ignore this when he was viewing the dailies. Or why the editor didn’t tell the director that he couldn’t find a good take with no camera shakes. Speaking of crew members who didn’t do their job correctly, who was in charge of picking Kristen Stewart’s wig? Because it is the worst hair piece I’ve seen since, well, Taylor Lautner’s wig in New Moon.
Like I said in the first paragraph, this review will not stop drooling tweens from coming out and making this a huge hit. And quite frankly, even some of those “Twi-Hards” admit that the books and films are bad. But for what it’s worth, this film is better than the first two in the franchise. That isn’t saying much, however. Filmtastic review – 1 1/2 stars.
Jonah Hex (2010) – Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, disturbing images, and sexual content/nudity.
Have you ever really wanted to like a movie, whether because you’re a huge fan of the director or star, and then just couldn’t come up with just one reason to like it? I remember I had this experience when I had to watch Dead Man for one of my film classes in college. I figured, heck, it’s directed by Jim Jarmusch and stars Johnny Depp? I was sure I would enjoy it. I was wrong. And in the case of Jimmy Hayward’s Jonah Hex, starring Josh Brolin, I was wrong again. See, I am a huge fan of Josh Brolin. Dating back to his film debut in The Goonies, I’ve always considered him one of those underrated actors that deserved more recognition. As of late he’s been getting the recognition he deserves, so it’s a shame that he chose Jonah Hex as his follow-up film after his Oscar-nominated performance in Milk.
Jonah Hex is an ex-Confederate soldier-turned-bounty hunter in the Old West. His foe in the film is General Quintin Turnbull, played by John Malkovich. Turnbull made Hex watch his family burn for killing his brother. Later, we’re told that Turnbull is believed to be dead but is actually in hiding and building some super weapon to destroy the United States. The story of revenge is there and all the elements of a good movie are there, too. The film’s cinematography is greatly saturated, but that could be because I watched a digital print of the film. And the CGI explosions are huge, so clearly they had a nice-sized budget to work with. However, the execution is where everything goes wrong. The editing was messy, for one. When I checked the IMDB page I saw that this film had four editors. Yes, four. Why in the world would a film need four editors? One, yes. Two, sure. But four? And the music was out of touch with the film’s setting. The film is supposed to be set in the Old West right after the Civil War and yet we’re hearing guitar riffs and rock music. And then we are introduced to Megan Fox’s character, Lilah, who has no apparent back story but apparently has feelings for Hex, and he for her. Her character is basically useless and her acting is completely horrible. The only good thing was that she was only on-screen for maybe fifteen minutes. And the greatest let-down of all was the final showdown between Hex and Turnbull. In what was surely supposed to be this huge climatic ending to this tale of revenge, we instead were treated to a very anti-climatic ending.
The tagline for this film was “Revenge gets ugly.” Actually, this film was ugly. I just hope that Josh Brolin can escape this film as unscathed as possible. I’m still a huge fan of his. Filmtastic review – 1 1/2 stars.
