DVD 900!!

I love collecting films.  I’ve been doing it now for 7 years.  And yesterday, with the inclusion of a handful of movies bought at Target on sale, I was able to reach a collecting milestone: DVD 900.  Well, not really “DVD” 900 as I’ve been moving to Blu Ray as much as I can now, but the terminology is what I used back in 2010 when I got my 400^th film for my collection so I’ll keep it here.

I’ve been buying movies for my personal collection since 2002, the same year I got my PS2.  It was a big deal.  Movies have meant a lot to me for a very long time.  I remember visiting Movie Gallery as a kid, and my Dad helping me pick out movies to rent all the time.  I remember having to sneak to rent my favorite film, Labyrinth, because my mother didn’t like the look of Hoggle on the front.  I remember him surprising me when I was sick or feeling bad or just because with Return to Oz or Hook or TMNT 3. 

I remember opening movies for the house on Christmas and Easters.  But in 2002, I was collecting for myself.  I walked downtown to a pawn shop and picked up my very first movie: Shallow Hal.  I don’t know why that was the one.  But it was, it was the first DVD I ever owned.  I sold it some years ago because that movie blows, and I kind of wish I still had it, just to frame it, or put it in a glass case like Scrooge’s first dime in Duck Tales.  I got a few more movies after that: Disney’s Hercules, a gift of Snatch and Mallrats from Eric, and of course a copy of Labyrinth.

"Nothing more ... ok, well maybe a couple 900 more."

I bought movies then like most people do, just getting ones you like or keeping gifts you receive.  I wasn’t really a collector until 2007.  Over 5 years I had bought maybe 25 or 30 movies.  But suddenly, I was getting into film in a new way.  I spent my college years working on a double major Writing/Theatre, and somewhere in there my eyes were opened up to the artistry and skill in filmmaking.  And I loved being the guy with the weird movies, and having people hang out in my apartment or bringing Dragon: A Bruce Lee Story to a party at the lake house.  It became a part of my identity, which is a whole ‘nother ramble to go on.

I started compiling films that I thought were great, or thought were terrible but fun to share, or just curiosities.  I started working up the nerve to create I Have an Opinion at that point, though in the old form you can see in videos on this blog.  I refuse to remove them because they stand for where I was.  And I standby those bad review videos even now.   In 2010, I even created DVD 400’s little video for Sylvester Stallone’s disaster film Daylight, which is awesome by the way.  I bought it because I heard it was terrible, and got it, watched it, and was blown away.  It was so much better than I had read.  It confirmed to me that I loved doing this, having my opinion on everything, and sharing it most importantly.

Daylight's biggest fan, eh heh heh.

In 2012 I took collecting to the next step, buying myself my first blu ray player and a foreign region-free karaoke player from the Phillipines so I could start buying non-US films too, or US movies that never got a domestic DVD, like Short Time or the $200 Split Second which was only $14 if I bought the Italian version Detective Stone. 

And now, 2014, 4 years after DVD 400, I have added 500 films to my collection.  Some of that comes from getting married (probably 75-100 of them to be honest) and even better together we’ve been finding and adding more hard to find films and wonderful editions of things to blu-ray, like Three Stooges on blu-ray (the first movie we saw together) or My Favorite Year, a crazy hard to find Peter O’Toole film we were finally able to add to our collection.  I have to get used to calling it “our” collection, too.  And using “we” instead of I.  I am sure she’ll forgive me for doing it in this editorial though.

This look back into the history of this collection is not to brag, but just to share.  Film is important to me, and always has been.  Sitting and watching a movie with friends means the world to me.  Having film parties and hosting and making gourmet popcorn is awesome.  Finding new things to share with my friends, like our love of Top Secret! which came on our radar out of nowhere, or how much I hated Waitress and couldn’t hold back how unhappy I was anymore around 30 minutes in and just really pissing off Schmidt.  Those are memories that are precious to me. 

"Hi, even I can't make Waitress good!" Eh heh heh.

So yeah, there’s all that.  Looking forward to whatever movie is DVD 1000!  Also, DVD 900 actual film review will be Saturday the 15^th!

IHAO on ... the Simpsons Movie

Ah, the Simpsons.  Beloved icon of yesteryear.  Oh Bartman, where did you go?  Do the goggles do ANYTHING?  And who ever did shoot Mr. Burns, and how is he still alive?  Excuse me, I’ve just been handed a telegram.  It seems that the Simpsons are still running now.  Also, I’m supposed to stop acting like I didn’t know that now because the joke is over.  Well, with all that into account, let me take you back to 2007.

This movie coming out was a huge deal.  I remember seeing it in theatres the night it came out.  The place was packed with a bunch of comedy fans, Simpsons fans, and all sorts of my college friends who didn’t care, but didn’t want to miss a cultural phenomenon.  It was a huge deal.  For all of a single weekend.  Then it just kind of … dissipated.  No one cared, no one talked about it, no one bought the DVD that I know except the most hardcore Simpsons fan.  And I could barely remember the thing.  This was before I started trying in earnest to delve into film, before my love of the medium extended to owning a huge collection and working hard to come up with a system to share my opinions in the most straightforward way possible.  Which is not what I’m doing here, because I am instead rambling, because I didn’t like this movie.

What'd he say?  I wasn't listening.

The movie isn’t bad, by any means.  It does a lot of things really well, and the first act is just absolutely glorious, with jokes thrown at you from every angle, and Simpsons nostalgia all over the place, rewarding fans or even casual viewers who remembered that one joke and look there is a reference to it!  But then the plot comes in and … the whole thing just falls crazy short.  It just becomes a boring, almost jokeless sit.  The show is predicated on the love of this family, despite the apparent reasons that Marge shouldn’t be with this buffoon.  And the movie pushes it too far.  Homer is just terrible once they are out of Springfield.  It is almost as if the film left all the funny, all the caring, all the things that made it Simpsons in Springfield.  And when we return, it is for a terrible joke about culture breaking down, which by the way would have made a MUCH more interesting film than what we got.

Some of the jokes are still great, most are just fine, but in the end, the characters are either unlikable or not there enough, and all the nostalgia is trapped in Act 1.  I can’t recommend it.  But you already know if you are going to love it because it is the Simpsons.  And that is its biggest blessing.

Grade: C-

Trailer Trash: Million Ways to Die in the West; Amazing Spider-Man 2; Captain America: Winter Soldier; Odd Thomas

Welcome to the first Trailer Trash!  I have a wonderful  app that I use that updates new trailers whenever they come out, and I thought it would be fun to after the box office weekend hits take a look at all the new trailers that my app shows me and rate them in a (somewhat arbitrary) fashion as TRASH or TREASURE.  So let’s get things going with the most interesting ones I saw to start this thing!

Million Ways to Die in the West

The new non-animated film from the guy who wrote, directed, and starred in Ted.  This time he writes, directs, and stars in a western.  Well, a western in title and setting.  But this trailer leaves a lot to be wanted based on tone and setting.  It is just a bunch of non sequitur jokes and characters who are incredibly out of place.  A dance sequence?  Terrible translation/fake language joke: “Milakunis, milakunis.” Ugh.  I mean, would it kill the voice actor turned actor actor director writer actor to do a damned western accent? 

There are some interesting quirks in the trailer, like a dream sequence with a hot air balloon in the redwoods.  And McFarlane’s non-westernness COULD potentially be time-travel or some other thing, which would make it more interesting.  But none of that is apparent.  What is apparent are just a bunch of stupid jokes and pretty bad looking CGI.

Verdict: Trash – This is not a movie I am even entertaining going to see in theatres.

Odd Thomas

This Dean Koontz supernatural action movie looks perfectly enjoyable.  Great lead casting, with an immediately likable Anton Yelchin (Chekov from the Star Trek new films), and a super competent creation team with Stephen Sommers behind the helm as director and writer.  You know, the guy from the Mummy, the first GI Joe film, and the awesome live action pulpy Jungle Book starring Liu Kang. 

The CGI looks good, the story seems interesting, and it comes out to theatres soon.  It was apparently made last year and has done well and gotten a release or something?  I am not sure the history, but I’m very excited about what this could be.

Verdict: Treasure – I will hopefully be seeing this in theatres when it comes out.

Amazing Spider-Man 2

This looks like a big CGI bash superhero film with … nothing I like.  Ok, that’s not completely fair, pre-powers Jamie Foxx I liked a whole bunch.  And the new suit looks good.  Gwen Stacy is nowhere to be seen in this trailer.  But everyone else is, and I don’t really like any of them.  And I hate the rhino update.  I don’t like adaptations of superheroes where they feel ashamed of the superhero.  Rhino is a hulking brute thief in a rhino suit.  Not a dude in a barely rhino-esque Iron Man suit.  But hey, that could just be me.

Verdict: HesiTant (gimme a break, not a good t-word for “meh”) – Meh, I’m not interested, wasn’t interested in the last one, but they could turn me around.

Captain America: Winter Soldier

Captain America was my favorite of the Pre-Avengers films … and the post-Avengers films … and I liked it more than the Avengers just barely.  It is a movie I thought did everything just right.  And this sequel has me foaming at the mouth.  I’m super excited for everything I see, for all the fan theories rolling around, and for all the action.  Comparing this with Amazing Spider-Man 2 above, the action here looks amazing, with the CGI to a minimum, and even when necessary like with Falcon, it still looks like he is there and interacting with things.

The stakes are amped up and this just has me crazy excited.  I absolutely cannot wait.

Verdict: Treasure – Midnight viewing probably!

And that’s the first Trailer Trash!  Lemme know how this works for you, the viewing audience, and I’ll see you with more trailers next Monday! 

IHAO on ... Adaptation.

With all the talk of Spike Jonze's Her for Best Picture this year, I went through my stack of "owned but haven't watched yet"s and pulled out Adaptation. to give it a go.  Now, this is gonna be a different film than Her, considering Her is Spike Jonze written and directed and Adaptation. is a Charlie Kauffman written film, but they are general collaborators and ... you know, all this preamble doesn't really add much, since I got some things to say that will probably make a few people unhappy.

I do not like Meryl Streep.  I find her to be hammy and unbelievable.  In everything she does.  To be fair, I have not seen her oldest stuff, but everything I see since I started collecting films 10 years ago, I cannot stand her.  And this film is no exception.  Her drug binge sequence was painfully boring and unbelievable, made all the worse by the incredible performance by Chris Cooper (Oscar winning performance, I should add).  Chris Cooper was a delight, and really did a great job.

But really, all praise to Nicolas Cage here.  He played two characters who always felt like they were onscreen together, were always believable, and were always distinct.  That is very very hard to do.  And he did amazingly.  How he didn't win for Best Actor here I could not even begin to guess, because Brody's the Pianist was nowhere near as believable or difficult of a role.

This scene in particular was COMPLETELY unbelievable.

There's no two ways around this, I did not like the writing in this movie.  I did not like the meta-narrative on top of meta-narrative on top of meta-narrative.  A film about the writing of a film about the writing of a film about the writing of a film ... ugh.  Now, the actual character stuff, the journey Cage's Charles and Andy go on, that was awesome stuff to watch.  But the actual conceit of the film, pointing out how voiceovers are dumb and then not doing them anymore, or "don't you dare use a Deux ex Machina" and then that is what happens, I really hated all of that.  It got in the way of what was really an intriguing character study, and killed the emotional impact of the climax.  I've become an easy crier, and I loved these characters, but I just was not invested any longer because of the writing format.  I appreciate what was trying to be done, and in theory I see the appeal, but I feel that what was gained ended up being pretty lackluster at best and ruined what was a very strong lead acting performance and interesting character arc(s).

Grade: C-; Cage's and Cooper's performance A+

IHAO on ... 13 - READER REQUEST

Request from Daniel Lees

13 is an Englishized version of a French film directed by the guy who made the original French film, and updating it slightly, such as adding more background information on some of the characters.  That’s kind of neat.  It is another film - in the trend I am finding myself reviewing – with a protagonist who is a relatively bad actor, this time played Sam Riley, who I referred while I was watching it as LeBerto DiPattrio. 

The basic premise is a down on their luck family needing money, and our protagonist finding a way into a gambling ring based around a basically Russian roulette tournament.  And from there, it is just a high-stakes tension film.

It is hard to talk about this movie because I cannot properly convey how well they were able to mount the tension.  I love intense films, especially ones with strong character stories going along through them.  The Hurt Locker did it brilliantly (and I still believe Jeremy Renner deserved the Best Actor Oscar that year instead of the ridiculous role Jeff Bridges played in Crazy Heart, blech).  The Mist never let up with its mood and tension.  Those are films I love.  And 13 just is not quite good enough.

It does a lot of things right, and really brings up the tension.  The music is fantastic, and the foley guy worked crazy hard on little things that most audience members would never notice that really enhanced the viewing.  But the storytelling is fractured to see all the other people in the tournament, except you only meet the plot important ones.  It also starts with the climax then backtracks to how we get there, which is a writing tactic I find appallingly stupid and lazy.  I’m looking at you Supernatural.

You still love me, right?

The ending itself is not the end of the tournament, but a long denoument, which is well done and keeps the tension up as we feel for our protagonist, and while the element of fiction at the end left me satisfied as a conclusion, I can see it turning off a lot of people.

In the end, 13 is a good movie that wants to be great, and I admire it, but just do not believe it is actually there.  It is lacking in very minor things across the board that all just don’t quite add up to an A-film for me.  I would suggest it to anyone interested, though, as it is a good sit.

Grade: B

IHAO DOUBLE FEATURE on ... Haywire and Surviving the Game

Because I missed the past two days of updates, I now present a DOUBLE FEATURE!  I plan to do these every now and again when I see two films that I think really compliment each other or attribute to the review of both.  We'll see how these go, and everyone likes them, maybe I'll try to do more of them.  On with the reviews!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This movie suffers from directorial influence incredibly hard.  What was filmed could have been a really cool spy thriller action film, kind of a more interesting Bourne film starring a real fighter as our lead action star, Gina Carano.   And before I get any farther, she is amazing(-ish).  The fact that she isn’t Wonder Woman is criminal.  To the world!  They even make a TERRIBLE put-down about it in this film.  DC, cast her!!  Anyways.

What we got was a first half of a film that built tension incredibly well and was intriguing with cool characters and a neat mystery, and a second half that was just a wheezing sigh of meh.  Which is frustrating, because I was loving the ride I was on.  It’s like going on this awesome roller coaster, building up, taking a cool twist and spin here, climbing up for a big climax, and then it just kind of is a gentle slope down to the bottom. 

This movie is very reminiscent of another Soderbergh film from a few years earlier, the Girlfriend Experience.  That is a movie about an escort with a pornstar as the lead, Sasha Grey.  

These two films could be a Double Feature between just the two of them.  They both aren't told linearly;  they both are hyper-stylized cinematic-ally (think like Breaking Bad except it is really noticeable and distracting);  they both take a basically non-actress actress and get around lack of acting skill with well used silence and reactions to coax emotion; they both fall emotionally and entertainment-wise flat around the halfway mark.  Haywire is better than the Girlfriend Experience, easily, because other than the climactic fight scene between Carano and Ewan McGregor - which jump cuts a few dozen times over the span of two minutes - Soderbergh gets out of the way of the action and lets Carano do her thing.  And when she does, it is great.  But the fight scenes are few and far between just after the half-way point, and many happen off screen.  Because that’s what we as the audience want in our action film, to not see the action.

Ok, she either just broke a dude's neck ... or broke a stool on a kitchen island.  This sounds great!

I cannot recommend this movie, because as a film, it peters out and becomes a waste of time.  And I hate that.  I really wanted to like this movie, I wanted to have a new star to look for.  Carano showed up in Fast and Furious 6, which I haven’t seen yet, but I plan to watch just to see how they utilize her.  She is  a precious commodity for Hollywood: an incredibly attractive, incredibly tough, real-deal fighter with that intangible “it factor” that could really propel her to amazing heights.  I hope that this film, being her star-vehicle that just kind of petered out and went nowhere because the director got too heavyhanded and watered down the film, I hope that this film doesn’t drag down what could be an amazing career in film for her.  We’ll see.

Grade: C-

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Surviving the Game is everything an action movie should be (other than innovative).  Except it stars Ice-T, who is quite possible the worst actor working in film and television.  Ok, ok, too bold a claim, and I don't normally like being completely hyperbolic and negative, but Ice-T really is out of his league in this film.  The movie covers for it pretty well once the action gets going, but for the first act we have to sit there with him and his perma-scowl face as he mumbles through lines, wearings a dredlock wig so fake that it makes 8 year-old rastafarian costumes on Halloween look authentic, and just does not do particularly well. 

The movie is not a new premise, and for some people, that will be an immediate turn off.  It is another in a long list of films that are based on “The Most Dangerous Game” short story conceit.  The thing that makes those movies different are the characters and way things go.  Going into this film, you know Ice-T is going to get hunted, so they don’t beat around the bush or pretend like he isn’t, which I appreciate.

The movie did two things incredibly well: great actors playing great characters as our hunters, filled with the likes of John C. McGinley, Charles S. Dutton, Gary Busey, F. Murray Abraham, and one of my favorite actors ever, Rutger Hauer.  They are all well-established characters, with unique traits and great moments to savor in this film, especially Busey, who delivers just a phenomenal monologue, known as the Prince Henry Stout monologue.  It is truly an awesome piece of acting.  I don’t normally link videos, but this one is too perfect to not include.

Pretty quickly, the focus shifts to the hunters instead of Ice-T, which is a very good idea, and fixes most of the problems with the film.  Though it is particularly off-putting once the light-skinned Ice-T ends up covered in soot to make him look like he is in blackface.

This movie is filmed with fun moments, twists and turns that I could never call before they happened, and a group of great characters.  And the only really BAD thing about the film is Ice-T himself, and the fact that this isn’t a new idea, or even a new take on an old idea.  It is an interesting, but classic, version of the Most Dangerous Game, but I will definitely watch it again, and I do recommend to any action fans.

Grade: B+

IHAO on ... Escape from Planet Earth

Escape from Planet Earth is a perfectly fine children’s adventure film … except …

Ok, there are a lot of little things that take something I actually kind of liked and really made it feel cheap and shoddy.  The voice actors are half really good, with the likes of Brenden Fraser and Rob Corddry doing really well … and then Craig Robinson, William Shatner, and George Lopez who are all awful.  They are awful not because they are bad actors, but because they are bad voice actors.  A voice actor needs to become the character on the screen, the animated character that we are watching.  But these three are just … themselves.  It is incredibly distracting to see a three eyed orange and yellow slug professor and have George Lopez’s voice come out of its mouth.  Just let that sink in.  The others are equally distracting, and all is made worse when Brenden Fraser and Rob Corddry get lost in their roles, as does Jane Lynch who  is introduced at the same time as the other stunt-castings, but she actually works hard to sound like the enormous, scaly, one-eyed Cyclops from a star’s surface she is.

The plot is a semi-interesting take on Area 51, and is about the strength of family working together.  The characters themselves are perfectly fine, and even enjoyable.  Brenden Fraser in particular was super fun.  The themes of brotherly love were great, but the central theme is misguided at best.  You see, the movie makes a big deal about how Corddry sits back and thinks too much and is too safe and won’t make decisions, illustrated by Rocket Boots he invented that work fine but he won’t use them, and less subtly by Fraser constantly jumping into danger like an idiot … except Fraser is the one who is treated like he is right.  That’s right kids, don’t think about what you are going to do and think critically, just do stuff.  Not only that, Corddry is never crippled by thinking and not doing things.  He is constantly making plans and being the hero.  But let’s pretend that he isn’t because we have to cram this morale in somehow!

Slow down, partner, back to the review.

The music is also incredibly irritating.  There are at least 3 songs sung in the film, and they are all sung by pop stars (or wannabe ones perhaps) and don’t really line up with the character’s thoughts or motives or really anything other than to try to make the movie ALSO have musical moments and sell a soundtrack.  That is frustrating.

Let’s talk about good things, though.  The film looks pretty good, especially the skies.  And the adventure aspects are perfectly fun, and the humor is spot on, with a particularly funny honky tonk piano gag.  I like this movie more than I probably should.  And it really isn’t all that bad.  It just really isn’t any good.  It is just fine, though I liked it.

Grade: C+

EDIT: Uhhh ... so this movie came out last year.  Watching it I thought it came out probably ... 3 years ago.  That is not a good thing, as what I thought looked pretty good for 3 years ago actually looks pretty bad when you have movies like Frozen and the Croods which came out at the same basic time and are beautiful.  I'm sticking with my grade, but man.

IHAO on ... Young Adult

Patton Oswalt is great.  Charlize Theron is pretty good.  Patrick Wilson is pretty great.  This movie had one line I thought was a nice idea that was interesting and really thought provoking, spoken by Patton Oswalt: “Guys like me are born loving women like you.”  All right ... I’ve said everything good I’m going to say about this movie.

This movie is emotionally bankrupt.  It plays with chords and strings of complex emotions but what is plays isn’t music, just plucking and then exclaiming “Look what I did, it is so brilliant and wonderful!”  We are watching an emotional journey of a “stunted” adult, Mavis Gary, who comes back to her hometown because she wants to get back with her former blah blah blah stupid stupid seen it a million times before.  We are supposed to watch her make an emotional journey, except she doesn’t, at all.  She continues.  We are supposed to feel a sense of “comeuppance” because her life isn’t good.  Except it IS good.  Her life is pretty great, except she is written to think it isn’t.  And that’d be fine if it was deserved.  But we just watch her go through this charade with the MOST OBLIVIOUS EX-LOVER IN THE WORLD trying to break up he and his wife at their baby’s naming ceremony, and she DESERVES it! 

This movie, when it came out, got compared to Bad Teacher, a comedy about an irredeemable woman getting her comeuppance and going through an emotional arc.  That movie, which had roofie jokes and pot jokes and inappropriate sexual jokes and all that, had a stronger emotional resonance and backbone that this film does.  And it was funny on top of it!  It was entertaining!  It wanted to be watched.  Watch it to get a way better version of the same protagonist.

Ooo, you think you are so smart, Diablo Cody, writing another stupid quirky female protagonist in a pregnancy based plot.  Go make Jennifer's Body 2.

And let me go down this train of thought a minute: it is a DISGRACE that the plot of this film writes itself into such a way that the nerdy guy gets the hot chick in a moment of shared emotional pain and baggage.  That is @#!(*&$!!  How incredibly short-sighted and pandering, not to mention insulting to anyone who could even begin to relate to the Patton Oswalt character.

This movie makes me angry on so many levels that exclude acting and general “how it is shot” attributes.  The movie looks fine, and the actors all act fine, with Oswalt being a stand out.  This movie fails in a moral and emotional way that has me fuming at the mouth.  I could never recommend this film.  Thank god for good to great acting making me keep from just shutting my television off while watching this turd.

Grade: C---

IHAO on ... Sound of Noise

Six musical terrorists hold a city hostage for 24 hours, and the only one who can stop them is a tone-deaf detective who just happens to be from a musical-prodigy family.  That is how an American film with the same plot and setup as Sound of Noise would have described it.  And it is basically accurate.  But it is missing the heart of the film, the essence of what makes it so good and intriguing.

I have come to really love some foreign films.  Other countries' films very rarely line up with the genre system American cinema uses.  And while our lines have been blending slowly, it is nowhere like a foreign film, which I suppose is part of their "foreignness."  Sound of Noise is a romantic comedy heist action mystery procedural action surrealist art film.  That just doesn't sound ... good, does it?  Well, it does kind of sound awesome, but it also sounds messy.  But Sound of Noise is a very tightly made film.

What the hell are you going on about?

I realize reading the past couple bits that I'm coming across a bit mad.  This is not an easy film to talk about, as you can see me struggle.  Let's just go bit by bit.

The acting is pretty good across the board, though nothing amazing or emotional.  Just all enjoyable and all well done.  The direction is very good, with lots of great little film moments and stagings that elevate the film incredibly well.  And the music is beyond reproach.  When a film is about music, you have to hope the music is great.  And Sound of Noise delivers, whether playing drums on a celebrity's stomach or using construction machines as a drum set.  This movie is like Stomp if that had a real plot.  Listen to the music wherever you can, because it is really great.  Probably because the Six Drummers all play themselves, so you have real musicians playing these parts.  I play piano and know a lot of about music, and all of the stuff you see is not faked or body doubled, it is them playing those instruments, and random objects, as far as I could tell.  That is an impressive feat.

The story is great up to a point.  Right around Act 3, they drop a lot of plot threads that built up the film and focus on a character story for our detective, which I do like, but it does leave a whole bunch of loose ends and could have people asking a bunch of logic questions.  Personally, I was along for the ride based on the characters, the music, and the art of the film.  They had me.  But there are large gaps of logic and plot that happen to bring about this change and progress.  The film also ends on a very quiet note, purposefully, but it does leave the film a little empty on the ending, lacking a lot of culmination.  It isn't unsatisfactory, it just hits its peak early for me and no longer builds to a climax and fervor I would have really loved.

Overall, I really like the movie, and cannot wait to share it with people.  It is a talking piece, and a film to be shared with others.  And the music is all just great.  I recommend the flick, especially for a large group.

Grade: B++

IHAO on ... Flypaper - READER REQUEST

This is the first of what I hope will be a series of something a little different for me on I Have an Opinion.  Since getting to jump into Netflix, and watching so many things, I’ve been able to find movies I normally couldn’t find.  Either because of limited release, obscurity, or foreign-ness, I’m able to get a whole lot more media to devour.  And I love to devour media.  So it was brought up to me to do some sort of Reader Request bank, to allow all of you the opportunity to send me requests to review.  I have two different ideas on how to accomplish this, but for now let me talk about READER REQUESTS.

All you gotta do is send me an ask, email, or some other message to get a request, and I will do my best to do as many of them as I can, every Friday.  I like the limitation.  Instead of only picking things I’m interested in, or things suggested to me by Netflix, I can actual see what people want to hear my opinion on.  And I always have an opinion.

All that lead up gets me to the first request I ever received, even before I restarted this blog in earnest:

Request from Earlnimbud

Heist is a film genre I wish there was more of.  I love heist films.  They are action packed, fun, many times hilarious, and always filled with interesting twists and turns.  Flypaper does all of that perfectly, as well as adding a lot of great character beats and intrigue.

The premise is that a man goes to a bank, and suddenly two bank robberies happen simultaneously.  And he is trapped inside for 10 hours with the others there.  Without his medication.  Oh yes, I forgot to mention that, he has OCD.  Patrick Dempsey plays a Sherlock-ian, Mentalist, Monk styled character we’ve grown accustomed to with television procedurals.  But don’t let that turn you away, he actually does a wonderful job in this performance.  And he isn’t the only one.  Every actor (that has a real role, which I’ll get to in a second) does just amazingly.  I could list all their names, but really, just check out the IMDB.  It is a great list of stars who just all do a great job.

The music is exactly as expected from a heist film.  But this is more than that.  This is a film written by the guys who wrote the Hangover (while not my cup of tea, filled with interesting scenarios and characters, that I cannot argue) and directed by the man who directed the Lion King.  So we are taking what could be a simple fun fluff action film and given a whole thrill ride with great direction and solid characters that go beyond being two-dimensional.  It is a small-ish ensemble film, and everyone is pitch perfect, except for one poor woman whose only job it was was to be a sexy Swedish woman, and that is a huge unfortunate loss, though I hope there are deleted scenes that fill out her character.

Sad when this cartoon character has more personality that your character does.  

Also, why aren't you reading Scandinavia and the World?  Do that.  Grade: A

I really do recommend this film.  And as the first honorary request, I thank my readers for suggesting it.  Suggest away, and I will get to as many as I can.

Grade: A+