the vynsane asylum

Some recently watched stuff.

The Bourne Legacy - The was some potential in expanding the Bourne universe. Too bad the movie was fairly stupid.

The Fugitive - One of my favorites. Hadn't watched it in a long times. Ford deserved an Oscar for it...or at least a nomination.

Robin Hood: Men In Tights - Haven't seen it since it first came out on VHS. A few chuckles, but I didn't care for most of it.

The Snowball Effect: The Making of Clerks - From the Clerks X DVD. I love this kind of BTS doc that goes deep and isn't just a fluff piece.

Son of Batman - Not bad. Not great either. Still hate that brat.

Mystery Team - Stars a pre-Community Donald Glover with his sketch troupe Derrick Comedy. Three friends have been solving mysteries since they were kids (think Hardy Boys or Encyclopedia Brown, but even more kiddy). Now they are 18 but still act like kids, but want to be taken seriously so they take on a murder investigation. Funny shit.

Kingdom of Heaven: Director's Cut - Heard the over 3 hour long DC was awesome, so I picked up the Blu-Ray a while back for like $4.00. Looks amazing and Orlando Bloom is impressive, but its just kind of dull.

I Know That Voice - Fantastic, fun doc about voice actors. Almost every major voice actor appears.

Ride Along - Ice Cube and Kevin Hart comedy. Not bad, I laughed a few times.

The Bourne Legacy - The was some potential in expanding the Bourne universe. Too bad the movie was fairly stupid.

Heh. I literally just finished watching that an hour ago.

The Amazing Spider-Man - Refresher before ASM2. Problematic, but good.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - Sloppy but entertaining.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Second viewing. So good.

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace - 15th Anniversary viewing. NOSTALGIA!

Godzilla - Good, but could've used more Godzilla.

And some prep work for Days of Future's Past.

X-Men: First Class - Still awesome.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Holy shit, I didn't remember it being THAT bad. It is really tough to find much of anything good to say about it.

X-Men - Holds up surprisingly well. The climax is a bit iffy.

X-Men 2: X-Men United (I will never call it X2) - Still great.

Heavy Metal. Been a really long time since I've seen it. There were a few parts I didn't remember at all.

Over the weekend, some channel had a Godzilla marathon so I left it on in the background while I did other things. I caught parts of 3 different movies. Mothra was in a couple of them. Mecha Godzilla was in one, and the other had a 3 headed dragon.

I finished watching all of Firefly but have yet to watch Serenity. It was a decent show but I was underwhelmed by it. The "cult" status of it and the hype from various friends probably killed it. That's the reason I won't watch Breaking Bad either.

Three Days of the Condor. Decent "political thriller" from the 70s with Redford as a CIA analyst that gets targeted by his own people after he stumbles on a black ops plot. I found it unconvincing that Faye Dunaway would sleep with the guy that kidnapped her, but that's 70s movie mentality for you. Max VonSydow was great as the assassin tasked with killing Redford. His monologue at the end is brilliant.

All the President's Men. The story of Woodward and Bernstein uncovering the Watergate scandal. Not as compelling as I would've thought given all the hype over the years. The ending particularly just kinda gives up and you get this headline montage of the last half of the story. Over rated.

Maleficent. Angelina Jolie chews expensive CGI scenery and everything else just annoys in this elaborately art directed sham of a remake. And even the art direction seems like a hodgepodge of other fantasy films like LotR and Oz and Alice in Wonderland and Avatar. I wanted to punch the three fairy godmothers. DiaF, bitches. I think they digitally enhanced Jolie's cheekbones. You could saw wood with them.

Monuments Men - Pretty good movie and it made it easier to watch since I knew the basics of what they were trying to do. The cast was quirky but definitely worked for me. I will always be a fan of John Goodman. Also, I almost cried at the part where Bill Murray hears the record for Christmas. It reminded me of my first Christmas in Japan when my mom sent me boxes of Christmas gifts that were wrapped and I sat, all alone, and unwrapped them. It was the most depressing thing I've ever experienced and I told her to never do it again.

American Hustle - Wasn't what I was expecting and it kind of fell flat for me. I liked the premise of it but it just didn't have that extra little bit.

Gravity - Good movie but how many fucking mishaps can really occur before you just give the fuck up?!

The Neighbors - A pretty funny damn movie and it'll be a rewatch when it hits the Red Box.

Chef. Jon Favreau gets back to his small film roots with this excellent film about a chef reconnecting with his son and his passion for food during a cross country roadtrip in a food truck. Great stuff helped by supporting roles from John Leguizamo, Sophia Vegara, Bob Downey, Scarlet Johansson, Oliver Platt, etc.

Million Ways to Die in the West. Fucking hilarious film. For me, it evoked the Mel Brooks style of hilarity in Blazing Saddles. It was very vulgar though.

Godzilla – Not nearly as good as it looked in the trailers. It's one thing to delay the monster action for a better payoff, and this movie clearly was aping Jaws and Jurassic Park in that regard (it even had characters named Brody and Dr. Grant, for fuck's sake). Unfortunately the human drama was pretty shitty and Aaron Whateverhisnameis was fucking boring in the lead role. Bryan Cranston gave a great performance in a thankless, underwritten role. Not that there needs to be compelling high drama in a Godzilla movie, but this was on the bad side of cheesy. Even the monster action was just okay – Godzilla looked plastic and "died" like four times. His KO move was the best part of the movie, at least. Some of the other action scenes were well-directed. I don't exactly have high hopes for Gareth Edwards Star Wars spinoff at this point, especially not with Mr. After Earth writing the script.

Double post, double fuck you.

Pacific Rim – I'd wanted to see this for a while and watched it today to cleanse the shitty aftertaste left by Godzilla. It was pretty fucking awesome. The effects were much better, the fights were fun and plentiful, and the design was unique and cool. Not to mention that the actors were actually good. Skip Godzilla, watch this instead.

I actually just watched Pacific Rim for like the 10th time on Friday night. It's a VERY good popcorn movie and gets right down to the action. Definitely recommend it.

Serenity - I finally watched this after having watched Firefly. I like how it's both a stand alone movie yet fills in some backstory from the show. I'd like to go back and watch Firefly again and then Serenity right after it.

Whedon has said Serenity is basically all the ideas he had for season 2 distilled down into a two hour movie.

Slicker wrote:Serenity - I finally watched this after having watched Firefly. I like how it's both a stand alone movie yet fills in some backstory from the show. I'd like to go back and watch Firefly again and then Serenity right after it.

After some of your earlier comments, I was afraid you didn't like it and I'd have to kill you.

Were you aware of the "I am a leaf on the wind..." part before seeing Serenity?


As for what I've watched lately:

Monsters - The Godzilla director's debut film, also about giants monsters and made for next to nothing. I remembered it being a lot better.

X-Men 3: The Last Stand - The last one I got to before DoFP. I used to say just the first 15 minutes were pretty strong. Now I think the first 30 minutes are pretty strong. Then it just falls apart.

X-Men: Days of Future Past - Awesomeness.

Devil's Knot - Small flick with Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth about the West Memphis Three. Watchable, but it drags at times.

Neighbors - Really funny, but there are a lot of little problems, especially with the character's logic.

Supernatural Season 1 - It's got quite a following so I gave it a shot. Pretty entertaining. A very X-Files vibe. Two brothers travel the country killing demons, ghosts, etc., while seeking the entity that murdered their mother years ago. The episode where they travel to Saginaw, MI was pretty funny, as it looked absolutely nothing like Saginaw. First of all, there were only white people there. And secondly, according the hotel the brothers stay at, it appears they think Michigan is well up in the Upper Peninsula.

21 Jump Street - Refresher before the sequel. I forgot just how fucking funny this movie is.

22 Jump Street - Just as good, maybe better. A very worthy follow up.
Director's Lord and Miller are on fire. They should be given the Deadpool movie.

Diabolical wrote:The episode where they travel to Saginaw, MI was pretty funny, as it looked absolutely nothing like Saginaw. First of all, there were only white people there. And secondly, according the hotel the brothers stay at, it appears they think Michigan is well up in the Upper Peninsula.

Reminds me of when I watched that old movie Nell (with Jodie Foster--who shows off her nice titties a couple of times). It takes place in North Carolina, and the sociologist or whatever (Liam Neeson, IIRC) takes her to Charlotte, being the only large city with an appropriate facility or something, and tells someone he's staying at the hotel on Tyrone Street downtown. Except it's Tryon, that's absolutely not a mistake any North Carolinian would make, and Charlotteans have this weird thing about only calling the urban center of town "uptown" even when referring to the bad parts.

Or how every single movie set anywhere seems to think the "red curb = no parking" is a universal thing across the entire US.