2 Razors

Too Quiet

  • Title: The Quiet
  • IMDb: link

the-quietThrillers work on keeping the audience on the edge of your seat.  This film isn’t a thriller.  Character studies work by examining individuals and relationships, bringing truths and secrets out, and making resolutions.  This isn’t a character study.  In fact, I’m not sure what it is.  I know what it wants to be, but it just doesn’t know how to get there.

Dot (Camilla Belle) is a miserable and lonely young deaf high school student.  After the death of her father she moves in with a family whose own troubles make hers seem bearable.  Nina (Elisha Cuthbert) is the spoiled cheerleader who doesn’t appreciate being associated with a school outcast.  Paul Deer (Martin Donovan) is a successful father who loves his daughter a little too much, and his wife Olivia (Edie Falco) is a pill-popping addict that was last sober sometime in the 90’s.

Too Quiet Read More »

All Style and No Substance

  • Title: Idlewild
  • IMDb: link

A musical about Prohibition?  That stars hip-hop stars?  Oh, dear.  Idlewild is never quite what you expect it to be, but then it’s never quite what you want it to be either.  Too long, overly ambitious, and with some very poor MTV-like music video moments, the film keeps falling down, and eventually you stop caring if it gets back on its feet.  And for a musical it’s severely lacking in good, or even appropriate, music.  Still, there’s some nice performances and camera work for those not interested in silly stuff, like a coherent plot.

All Style and No Substance Read More »

Fortune Cookie Warrior

  • Title: Peaceful Warrior
  • IMDb: link

Peaceful Warrior

The film has a nice message that may resonate with those of a religious persuasion (though there is no actual religion in the film) or those that love to buy self-help books.  The message, however, is so poorly presented that it’s impossible to take seriously when all were given is a series of simplistic sentences, which would be more at home inside a fortune cookie, attempting to sound more meaningful than they are.

Fortune Cookie Warrior Read More »

National Lamppon’s Vaca…,er, RV?

  • Title: We’re the Millers
  • IMDB: link

rv-posterBefore we start click and watch the trailer for this film.  Go ahead, I’ll wait….hmm…hmm…hmm…

Oh, you’re back?  Okay answer me this – Did you think that trailer was really funny or kinda’ lame?  Your answer to that question will tell you whether to go see the film as it’s just 98 minutes of the same dumb dad, hip-hop white son, bitchy teenage daughter, redneck RV campers, shit jokes, and yodelling.  Yeah…I’d pass too.  It’s not that it’s horrible, but seriously why waste an hour and a half of your life on something this dumb and pointless?

Disconnected from his family and in trouble at work Bob Munro (Robin Williams) decides to gather his family, his teenage daughter Cassie (JoJo) and son Carl (Josh Hutcherson) and wife Jamie (Cheryl Hines), together and take an family vacation to Colorado (while secretly working on his proposal).  Since his family was set on a trip to Hawaii they aren’t too happy with the change in plans.

National Lamppon’s Vaca…,er, RV? Read More »

Assassin or Soccer Mom?

  • Title: Elektra (Unrated Director’s Cut)
  • IMDB: link

Okay, I’m one of the few people that liked 2003’s Daredevil which stayed true to both the character and storyline of the comic character.  Elektra tries something different and the result is both ridiculously bad and unintentionally funny. 

The film takes story elements from two Elecktra graphic novels, Elektra Lives Again and Wolverine/Elektra: Redeemer sans Wolverine, that don’t really fit together and then hired some guy to fill in the rest of the film with what he thought sounded like comic book dialogue.  The result is a train wreck of a film that never can pull all, or really any, of its elements together.

Assassin or Soccer Mom? Read More »