How to Murder Your Wife — 7

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058212/

This was yet another girlfriend choice, but thankfully this wasn’t nearly as bad as the last one she made me watch. This one was actually quite good.

First off I would like to say that I WANT THE MAIN CHARACTERS JOB!!!!!!! Holy hell, the guy is a genius! And the movie opens his job really well. Basically he is comic (like Sunday paper comics, not book type) artist for a spy. And he gets his inspiration for his comics by actually acting them out. His butler follows him around with a camera that actually looks like a gun, so when you first see him, it looks like he is trying to snipe him off. Genius way to start a movie I must say. But later on he goes back and looks at the photos taken and then spreads out what he has done over a few weeks worth of comics. Total Genius.

But one night he is celebrating at a friend’s Bachelor party and had wayyyyyy to much to drink. And lo and behold, a lovely lady pops out of a cake. Well Stanly Ford(the main character) Falls in love instantly. And when he wakes up the next morning there is a woman in his bed, with a wedding ring on. Somehow in the fiasco of her jumping out of the cake and time of Stanly waking up in the morning, he finds himself married to her. I have no idea how he accomplished it, the movie kind of inserts one sentence answer just to cover it, but it still happened.

Oh and the best part? She doesn’t speak English. She speaks Italian. So right off the bat it’s insanity.

To top that off, his Butler refuses to work in a house where couples live together. So in the insanity of getting wasted, waking up married to someone who doesn’t speak your language, your butler also quits.

The only thing that bothered me was that near the end he was in a courtroom hearing and it felt like it dragged on forever, I almost fell asleep it was so boring. But then when I was about to konk out, it just picked itself right back up again.

All in all, this movie is pretty good. I also like how one more than one occasion they broke down the 4th wall and actually talked to the audience directly, it’s something that is not done at all anymore in movies. And it truly adds a certain effect to the film.

Base Score = 6
+1 for job AWESOMENESS!!!!
+1 for crazy night of insanity
-1 for slow courtroom proceedings.
= 7/10

Sorority Boys — 4

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0279781/

So my girlfriend dragged me into this one. I remember watching it a long time ago and hating it. Basically this is the story of Frat house shenanigans. 3 of the highest members of KOK basically get screwed over and get kicked out of their house for stealing all of the money out of the KOK safe. They have to find a way to get to their house’s most important event, the boat gala or some such shit, where they take a boat out to the sea and throw a big party on it. Boring.

Well the way they find out where its ganna be held is by dressing up as woman and invading their own house. Sure enough after a bit of being in there, they get thrown out. The Sorority house across the way is KOKs rival, but without knowing that the ‘boys’ were dressed up as women, they took them into their sorority house and offered them a place in it.

Long story short, this movie has some damn good laughs in it, but it did not make up for the terrible amount of story that tried to go along with it. If you are looking to waste an evening of your time, then this is perfect for you, if not then move on.

Hell even the movie cover tells you how bad it is, 3 STARS!!!!! WOOOHOOO!!!!!! its like the people who made this movie were excited that it wasn’t a total pile of crap. Or some poor bastard felt bad for these guys and was generous enough to give them 3/5 stars.

Base Score = 5
+1 for dildo slingshot
-1 for lack of a good story
+1 for a few damn good laughs
-1 for cross dressing stupid frat boys
-1 for frat/sorority house movie
= 4/10

Empire Records — 9

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112950/

Holy crap has it been since a long time since I’ve watched this movie. It must have been in my teenage years that I saw this movie. I remember loving it back then, and even more so now that I have watched it as an adult and can actually relate to the situations more.

Basically this is the story of a small business that sells CDs, Cassette Tapes, and even Vinyl. It’s a small one man owned business that’s struggling to stay up and running. But the day that this movie takes place on, is the day that they are having a washed up pop-star show up, Rex Manning. This guy is basically the douchebag of people, he acts like everyone you expect to in the fact that he’s a dick out of public view. A lot of people hate him, others love him, but mainly he is a shadow of his former success now.

Anyways, the crew at Empire Records are all completely different, it’s insane really. But yet I really love it when movies do that. Each character plays someone from a different click and somehow they all get along, while also getting on each other’s nerves. I love it.

I really could go on and on about how much I love this movie, and to top it off, there is really nothing that I do not like in it at all. I am trying to find a reason to not like it, or to even give it a negative in any way or form, and the only thing I can think of is that Rex Manning is a dick, anything else and it just seems like I can’t come up with anything.

All in all, I fucking love this movie. It has actors when they were young, a good story, excellent character development, excellent pacing. Really this is a gem that most people probably just passed right on up.

Base Score = 8
-1 for Rex Manning douchbaggery
+1 for each character being different
+1 for a great story
=9/10

Lilo & Stitch — 8

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275847/

And just when I think that Disney has gone down the shitter and nothing can save it from itself (except maybe Pixar, which is technically still a separate company) It goes and gives me a happy sandwich.

I have not seen a Disney movie this good, since… well I can’t remember when. This movie had a smile on my face from pretty much the intro credits till the ending. I was not actually expecting it to be this good.

Lets put it this way. When have you ever seen a fish eating a peanut butter sandwich?

Ok, seriously now, I really enjoyed this movie. The intro was a little boring, but it was needed in order for the storyline to work as well as it did. It is also chocked full of humorous parts from start to end. But amidst all the humor there were actually sad parts too. Like the fact that Lilo is an orphan and that there are social workers checking up on Lilo and her sister, Nani, to make sure that she’s taken care of properly.

The only other thing that bothered me was the voiceover of David. It just seemed like it didn’t fit, and I can’t tell you why. It was the only thing in the movie that threw me off on a regular basis.

All in all, it’s a great movie, even if you hate Disney, or kids movies; this one is still awesome and is worth checking it out.

Base Score = 8
+1 fish eating a peanut butter sandwich
-1 for slow intro
+1 for an extremely good balance of humor and sadness
-1 David’s voiceover
=8/10

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day — 8

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970468/

So this was one of those that my girlfriend dragged me into. It was not a fantastic film, but it was still charming and a non-stop chaos throughout the entire movie.

This movie takes place over a 24 hour period. And it follows the life of Miss Guinivere Pettigrew, a woman who had lost her job and was basically homeless when she stumbled into ‘work’ accidentally for one of my most hated actresses of all time, Amy Adams. I don’t know what it is about her, but every time I see her I have the almost uncontrollable urge to choke-slam her into the ground. Anyways, Pettigrew, by no means of her own, becomes Delysia Lafosse(Amy Adams character) ‘Social Secretary’. Now mind you Pettigrew looks like she has been hanging around garbage dumps and all this, so she looks like crap. Not to mention that she’s hungry throughout most of the film, it’s kinda the films running joke really.

Anyways, Lafosse is in love with 3 men, all at the same time, and she has to play juggler while trying to not let the other men know that the other men exist. It’s kinda fun to see how chaotic it all gets, especially when all 3 of them come to her party and try to grab her attention. Not to mention that at some point during the whole fiasco all 3 of them find the time to propose to her. Yes, and during all of this Pettigrew is stuck in between Lafosse and everyone she comes across. It’s really hard to talk about because everything is so inter-mixed with each other.

I won’t ruin the ending, but it actually brought a smile to my face for a while it was so well done.

Oh ya, the film takes place in London approx in 1939, so just right before WWII started. Really the atmosphere and location just add to the interesting piece that is Miss Pettigrew.

All in all if you have the time, this movie is good, but only if you are in the mood to follow a crazy story, that actually easily could have happened back in that time.

Base Score = 6
+1 for non-stop Chaos/the entire movie happening over the course of 1 day
-1 for Amy Adams
+1 for a running joke
+1 for a good ending
= 8/10

Twilight, RiffTrax version — 9

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1099212/
http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/twilight

I don’t get Twilight, I watched it a lot of times mainly when I had my serving job at Studio Movie Grill where I must have seen the movie a ton of times. I never read the books, but from what I saw in the movies, I don’t want to read the books. Frankly I hate this movie and the way that whats-her-name Author lady thingy changed vampires. Stand in the sun, and instead of disintegrating, they get all glittery. Most vamps don’t kill humans for food, they are ‘vagitarian vamps’ oh whoops, I mean vegetarian. After all whats the fun if there is no death?

So I found RiffTrax. Or i should say that a friend of mine, Stewart told me about it a long time ago and I finally decided to try one. Basically its all the cast from Mystery Science Theatre 3000. They give you an audio clip that you play while the movie is going on. So its basically MST3K for actual ‘good’ movies, not crappy sci-fi movies.

Now i cannot remember laughing this hard in a movie, ever. There really was no alternative for the amount of one-liners the the RiffTrax crew can pull out of their ass at any given moment. And because of it, it actually makes this movie tolerable to watch now. I will always remember a few parts of it, especially when the main characters are just sitting there staring at each other the RiffTrax crew constantly yells “line!” And that’s in a lot of parts in this movie.

All in all RiffTrax knows how to make a movie entertaining, even if it is a dung-heap. I suggest to everyone to at least try a RiffTrax on a movie that you don;t like at all, and then tell me that the movie is not watchable after the fact.

Base score = 5 (the movie alone)
+4 for RiffTrax awesomeness!
= 9/10

A better explanation of my ratings

I have had a few friends that have been a little confused about my rating system, so I feel the need to better explain them.

At the end of a review you will see a format like so

Base Score = x
(various +’s and -’s to the base score here)
= (the total score)

Now the base score, x, is what i think the movie is directly after watching it, so for instance in Animal House I gave the base score of a 6. That is what I feel the movie deserved after watching it.

Now the +’s and -’s are certain things in the movie that just made it that much better, or that much worse. For instance a movie can have some damn good action scenes (giving it a +1) even through the rest of the movie sucked. Same thing with the -’s, if there is something that i just flat out hate, or it didn’t seem to fit, such as a fat chick in a bikini, then it would get a -1.

Now lets use some examples just to help out a little bit further. I have 2 examples for you, the first one is The Black Cauldron If you notice near the bottom that the base score was 4. That is what I feel the movie deserved. Its what I personally thought of the movie. Then you add in all the +’s and -’s it actually brought down the score to a 2. The movie just had that many bad things about it. It actually brought the movie down in score.

Now at the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Being John Malkovich. Now the base score is 8, and with all of the +’s and -’s added in, it actually brought the movie up to a 12(but since the highest score i give is a 10, that’s all I can give it). I tried to find at least something bad in it, but i couldn’t think of it, that movie was just that well made.

Yes, I am biased at times, but who isn’t. After all this is a movie review blog, so its what I think of movies.

I hope this clears up things a little bit, if not fire the questions away and i will be happy to try and explain my insanity to you.

-Bryce DeShazo

Sex Drive (Unrated) — 8

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1135985/

Now I have never seen the original, I watched the Unrated version first. When you first try to watch the unrated version, the director and one of the writers comes on screen warning you to not watch that version first, but to watch the theatrical version first. Well I ignored that warning and went ahead and watched it anyways.

Now the beginning of this movie was slow, it was entertaining, but it felt like nothing was ever going to happen. Then once the guys get in the car to go on a trip across county is when the movie starts its momentum and it never lets go. Ever.

This movie is not cameo heavy, but there are more than a few random celebrities, my favorite of course is Seth Green,there is nothing that Seth Green touches that is not golden in my book. And in this movie he plays an Amish-man. Fucking Genius. He also at one point said something so funny that me and my girldfriend could not stop laughing and we missed a whole scene because we were laughing over it so damned hard.

This is honestly one of the best comedies i’ve seen in a while and its fricken awesome! Although it seemed like there really was an excessive amount of nudity in it and it looked like it didn’t belong, so my guess was thats where the “unrated” part comes in, it literally looks like they took took the theatrical version, had a whole bunch of men and women do things naked on a green screen and then super-imposed the nudity into the movie. Interesting, but really not necessary at all, then again they did warn me not to watch it until I saw the theatrical version first, so they are forgiven.

But seriously, this movie had me in tears from laughing so damn hard.

All in all this movie is well worth watching, although it seemed like it was going nowhere in the beginning, it is all good and well worth it now. I recommend anyone see this movie, providing that you are under the age of ~30, after that you just might not get it.

Base Score = 7
+1 for a great warning at the beginning of the film
-1 for not seeming like anything was going to happen
+1 for Seth Green
-1 for not seeming like it was going to go anywhere for a bit
+1 making me laugh so hard that I cried.
= 8/10

Barton Fink — 8

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101410/

This is a Coen brothers film. For those of you who are not familiar with the Coen brothers, I believe you just do not know who they are. The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, O Brother Where Art Thou, Fargo, etc. the list goes on. I love the style of filmaking that they do, and a while ago I picked up a few of their movies to check out some of there not-so-well-known work. And this one was really not that great… until the ending. Which is not a common thing with the Coen brothers, but it does happen on occasion.

Basically this was the story of a writer. A writer on broadway, who made a really damned good show, and then hollywood bought him via a contract and he moved to LA. He wanted to stay in a cheap hotel because he didn’t actually want the hollywood feel. Fair enough so far. But the second he gets there and hears of his assignment, he immediately gets writers block.

Seriously, the first half of the movie is hard to watch because its sooooo slow. but once you hit a little past the halfway mark, your sucked in. I was actually shocked at what happened and had to find out what happened. But it was AWESOME!

Now the only thing that really nagged at me, other than the fact that the movie was slow for the first half, was that most of the actors seemed misplaced. Like there should have been someone else playing a lot of the roles, but not the ones they choose. The main character is played by John Tutturro, the bellhop was played by Steve Buscemi, who does nothing strange in this movie at all. I honestly thought I was in the wrong place because the actors seemed misroled (wordage?).

But the ending, oh god the ending was fantastic! I could not have seen a better ending for it then what the Coen brothers choose. I was honestly at the very end of my seat jaw dropped and eyes wide open, not blinking, waiting to see it all go down!

Another fantastic thing about the Coen brothers and this film, is that there are some things that the Coen brothers never reveal to you, like how the event in the middle of the movie actually happens, or even why it does. And then there’s one other thing i will leave alone because its still bothering me. I think I figured it out, but its never that simple, so I know that its wrong.

All in all if you can sit through an hour of boredom, its well worth the payoff. It does that some patience though. So sit back and enjoy, but don’t fall asleep and have to pick it up later like i did.

Base Score = 6
+1 for Coen Brothers
-1 for massivly slow beginning
+1 for a shock in the middle
-1 for actors being misroled
+1 for a good ending
+1 for not knowing what happens to a few things and leaving it up to you to figure out.
= 8/10

The Black Cauldron — 2

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088814/

So this is a Disney movie. Or at least you think its supposed to be one, but this is one of the most gruesome Disney movies i have ever seen. Its brutal, has a lot of death in them and frankly it just seems like Disney should never have made this movie. Its garbage even saying all of that.

So this is the typical hero story, and by typical i mean just that, typical. Boy starts off as a farmer, something happens and he must leave home to ‘become a great warrior’ but really the kids just the biggest pansy i have ever seen in any movie. Throughout the whole movie he just stays the exact same. He doesn’t grow a pair, he doesn’t really do anything at all to show that hes grown throughout the entire movie, at the end hes still the same whiny boy.

None of the characters are relate-able in any way. There are quite a few, and not a single one of them seem to have any depth whatsoever. Not the big bad evil king skeleton guy (who resembles Skeletor from He-Man almost to a scary degree). It seems like whoever was in charge of the story here just fucked it up and had to re-write it in like 3 days is what it seems like.

Then there’s a pig who can see the future by drowning it. I kid you not. These people hypnotize a pig, its head drops into water and then all of the sudden you can see the future. Crazy. And then they loose the pig like 4-6 odd amount of times throughout the movie and somehow whenever they need the pig for a plot device, BAM! its there.

This movie also had some of the largest amount of continuity errors I have ever seen in a movie that I cannot list them all( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088814/goofs and this is only a few of them, I caught a lot more than what was listed here).

And the other thing that royally pissed me off during the movie was the little furry weird guy that you see in the bottom right hand corner of the picture here. I wanted to kill him from the moment I saw him until the ending. And even after the movie was over and done with I felt that my prey escaped me. I want to kill him that badly.

Disney failed me again in this movie. There is not a single song in it at all, Not one. Well ok, there is background music, but there is not one where the characters are singing in it. Instead this movie replaced singing with undead, brutal amounts of meat being cut in the movie, deaths, etc. Its also the first Disney movie to receive anything higher than a G rating. This one got a PG rating(insert spooky noises here). But even then it was not enough to save the movie.

All in all I could go the rest of my life without seeing this movie again, don’t waste your time on it unless you are incredible bored and you can’t think of something better to do.

Base Score = 4
-1 for bad characters
+1 for Skeletor look-alike
+1 for animal cruelty
-1 for massive amount of continuity errors
-1 for poping in plot devices when they were needed
-1 for the stupid furry guy
-1 for no singing
+1 for an awesome sword.
= 2/10