Blood: The Last Vampire

I got this the day it came out on Netflix (Tuesday) because 1. I love legitimate vampire movies that aren’t about gay teenagers and 2. I saw the anime movie it was made after and really liked it.

For all intents and purposes it is not much different from a lot of vampire stories. There is a war going on between vampires and humans. The vampires (called “bloodsuckers” in the movie) take on human form in order to infiltrate us or something and there is pretty much only one person who can stop them…

Of course it’s a cute Japanese girl.

Saya is a vampire hunter or maybe just a fucking badass who likes to kill them, I don’t really know. It is her destiny somehow; doesn’t matter. Point is she slays things with a motherfucking kitana. She gets word from a secret society that she works with that the super-powerful uber-demon is nearby and that she has to kill it in order to put an end to the war.

She poses as a student in a school on an American Air Force Base in Japan. There is pretty much no reason for this other than the fact that for the rest of the movie she is dressed like a schoolgirl. A hot, Japanese, sword-wielding schoolgirl.

That’s all the setup you need story-wise. Needless to say she does terrible things to many, many beings within the stylish 97 minutes.

As far as the violence goes, it is more on the ‘Sin City’ side in that it is purposefully stylized and doesn’t look at all like real blood splatter. But it is made up for in sheer volume. When the vampires take on their true form it is not really impressive. It reminded me of watching a movie about gargoyles on Sci-Fi. The action sequences in terms of the fighting are really well done though. And that would make sense because it was made by the Crouching Tiger people.

Anyways, the movie is worth a watch. If you like vampire-killing on a grand scale then you will like it. If you don’t you won’t. That is really about as blunt as I can be. I liked it. But hey, I’m a sick fuck who likes watching little Asian girls cut shit in half.

Score – 80

The Day That Was

If I could take a break from movie blogging for a moment I would like to share my day with you all.

It started as any other might start. I got up, brushed my teeth, drank a Slim-Fast (irony alert!) and went over to my friend’s house whose puppy I am letting out twice a day to go to the bathroom until she arrives home from work.

<- The puppy, Addie, pretending I killed her.

I let her out and played with her and made sure she made both urine and stool and all that fun puppy stuff. When I picked her up to go back inside in her little puppy pen she was not amused. She tried unsuccessfully to wiggle free from my grips.

I had a few things to do after that, so I did em. Post office, bank, all that daily bullshit we have to do. I had to stop off at Rite-Aid and pick something up.

Since this is a movie blog, I will set up precisely what transpired at this Rite-Aid in screenplay fashion…

EXT. RITE-AID PARKING LOT – DAY

BENN exits car. He walks left to enter Rite-Aid. He notices teenager smoking a cigarette in his peripheral vision. He glances over, meeting eyes with the stranger briefly before breaking contact. He continues around the side of the building to the front where the entrance lies.

TEENAGER

“(garbled language) you fat bitch.”

BENN hears the insult volleyed his way by the mysterious, cunty teenager and stops in his tracks. His mind focused, his path clear, he breaks off back in the direction of the young man.

BENN

(standing some 20 feet from the teen)

“Are you serious?”

TEENAGER meets BENN’s gaze and flashes a shit-eating grin before taking a puff of his cigarette. His arrogance is palpable. There is only one way this can end.

BENN strides purposefully towards TEENAGER. His heart beats fast, knowing the altercation has commenced.

He balls his right fist, complete with ring on index finger. There is no way out now. Before he knows it the punch has landed.

TEENAGER catches the shot below his left eye, just to the left of his nose. He stumbles backwards, legs failing before falling pathetically next to a trashcan. He glances up momentarily at the man he never expected to strike.

He can think of nothing to say. He scrambles to his feet and flees the area.

BENN turns around, walks into Rite-Aid, makes his purchase and leaves.

As he enters his red 1990 Toyota Camry he scans the area for the little fuck, but he has gone. The day has been won.

-Fin-

Back to regular style if I may. It’s amazing what can scream through your mind during a moment of profound and shocking disrespect. Looking back I can re-trace my mindset in the two seconds it took me to turn around and teach Manners 101 to this little fucking prick who thought he was king dick.

When I heard those words, which were quite clearly aimed at me, it stunned me. I mean, who does that? Who decides that it is OK to say something like that? Because he is ditching fifth period to smoke outside of Rite-Aid he thinks the world is his? And not only is the world his, but he is going to lob insults at whomever crosses his path? I wonder, had he said something to people before me who just let it pass?

Not this time.

Not me.

This wasn’t just going to ‘happen’ without an emphatic counterpoint.

It has been kind of difficult to explain to my friends throughout the day how this situation came to pass. I am not a violent person. If you were to ask anyone who knows me, the term ‘teddy bear’ will likely figure prominently in the descriptions given.

I don’t just hit people. Which is why I found my reaction to be so interesting. My mind had already landed that punch the moment the words entered my ears. Something just clicked.

Not this time.

Not me.

The dangerous arrogance of his words and subsequent grinning reaction sent ‘fight-or-flight’ rhetoric out the window. Had he simply turned away, pretending he said nothing, perhaps I would have walked away. But he met my eyes and for all intents and purposes said the words again with his glance.

You can’t just say that to me. You can’t just say that to anyone. Depending on who you say it to, yeah you might get away with it; smiling your smile and being a big man.

Not this time.

Not me.

I remain a non-violent man. I take no satisfaction in having my baser instincts take hold. It will not become a habit. My friends can still rib me about my weight. I can handle it. After all, I am just about the most self-deprecating motherfucker in the world.

Maybe the unknown kid with the fractured orbital will think twice before saying something to a guy like me again.

If not?

Then maybe, just maybe, he’ll find out that I can hit harder.

Ben X

First of all, this movie is from Belgium. What the fuck? I forgot that was a country until three days ago. Weird. Anyways, this was another one that I wanted to watch because of the high success rate of foreign movies that I have watched so far. Synopsis sounded interesting, blah, blah, blah. You know the story. It was sweet because I was waiting for a new movie to come in the mail and this one was on the Netflix streaming dealie.

The story focuses on Ben (imagine that) who is a high school student with Asperger’s Syndrome (a mild form of autism). There are two kids who relentlessly pick on him at school which makes his life a living hell. His only solace comes in an MMORPG clearly modeled after World of Warcraft.

There he isn’t Ben, the kid with autism, he is a level 80 (told you it was like WoW) knight. He fights alongside his internet dream woman whom Ben feels is the only person in the world worth the time.

She helps him come up with a way to silence his tormentors by finding the appropriate ‘End Game’. Normally I hate it when people give away that there is a twist ending because it always makes me think about it while I watch the movie. This is how I figured out The Sixth Sense as I fucking watched it. But you will not see this twist coming, so I feel quite secure in that I haven’t ruined anything for you.

I liked it a lot. It is shot in documentary style, talking to administrators, teachers and Ben’s parents. Ben does the narrating over the flashback segments. It was extremely disturbing, and not just because the guy playing Ben was clearly in his 30s and in high school.

It’s a bit hard to gauge exactly how much I liked it because while it was quite good, it isn’t so out of the ordinary in its quality. I would probably watch it again, but I feel I got the full effect upon one viewing.

If nothing else it kept Belgium in my consciousness for a few days. That in itself is pretty amazing.

It also has a fucking amazing soundtrack.

Score – 80

The Zombie Diaries

It’s not often that I will talk about a movie’s cover in great detail, but this is one of those times.

It’s a pretty sweet cover, really. Biohazard symbol on the back of a bulletproof vest, dude with his head down, walking towards a hoard of zombies while clearly ready to fuck some shit up. Shaved head, pistol in his left hand, shotgun in his right.

I saw this movie at Best Buy and got excited. Because it is quite apparent by the cover that some shit is about to get serious.

Unfortunately, while the cover is pretty kickass, nothing on the cover happens in the movie. There is no Max McZombiefucker armed to his balls with weapons. There are no post-apocalyptically shredded buildings either. The cover is, in a word, FAIL.

I took this movie as a challenge as well. On the back some critic said it was better than 28 Days Later. Fuck that. If you say something ridiculous like that I better be fucking blown away starting with scene 1.

I wasn’t blown away. It was just pretty good.

The movie follows three video ‘diaries’ of the aftermath of a viral outbreak that turns people to zombies. The first diary is a TV news team covering the outbreak, the second is several weeks later and is a group of people trying to scavenge grocery stores to stay alive and the third is a group holed up in a farmhouse picking off the undead as they approach.

As you can imagine, all three stories come together and I will leave it at that.

It was kind of a double-edged sword, this one. I would have liked it more had it not been compared to my favorite movie of all-time, but if it hadn’t been I probably wouldn’t have watched it. Catch-22 I suppose.

I did enjoy it though. It was nice and violent and the zombie makeup was pretty good. I bought the movie because Best Buy has pretty much every DVD on sale before they make the move to strictly Blu-Ray, so I bought it for basically the same price as renting it.

I would watch it again, mainly so I can annoy my friends who don’t like zombie movies by making them watch it.

Pretty cool flick. However, it cannot even lick the taint of 28 Days Later.

Score – 70

I Love You, Man

I was surprised to find out that this movie actually had nothing at all to do with Judd Apatow, which is weird because it plays out exactly like one of his. Using the same actors (Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Joe Lo Truglio) and humor.

Paul Rudd’s character is a fairly normal guy. He proposes to girlfriend Rashida Jones and she accepts. She goes and calls everyone she knows to tell them the news and finds it odd that he doesn’t do the same. Slowly they both start to realize that he has absolutely zero male friends. The closest thing is the douchebag real estate agent who works with him.

He goes on a series of “man dates” set up by Rudd’s gay brother, played by Andy Samberg. I like Samberg a great deal, but I thought his character was a little stereotypically overdramatic in its creation. It wasn’t his fault, he played the character he was given. It was just written poorly.

One of the best parts of the movie is the relationship between Jaime Pressly and Jon Favreau, who play a married couple. Pressly is always a riot in everything she does and it was weird seeing Favreau as a gruff, man’s man. He is usually so odd and out of place (on purpose). Their whole relationship is built on fighting in public and him begging her to do things sexually if he agrees to do what she wants. It’s just a really funny addition to the movie.

Jason Segel’s character was very funny, but also a little sad. He reminded me a great deal of myself in that as he has grown up his friends have all moved on and started families while he still acts like he did in high school. A sad realization, but hey, at least I write movie reviews for fun and roughly 11 people read them. Yay!

It follows the Apatow-like formula to a tee. Quirky but likable characters, unlikely friendships emerge, then there’s trouble in that friendship and everything falls to crap before finally everything is perfect again in the last five minutes.

The Lou Ferrigno part of the equation was a bit forced to me, but it had its giggle-worthy bits.

I actually ended up liking it a great deal more than I thought I would. I just wanted a few laughs but I ended up getting more than I expected. Very good movie to watch with some friends if you just want to laugh.

Score – 75

Once

I found out about this movie in a rather roundabout fashion. Not so long ago I was having issues with insomnia where I couldn’t fall asleep until 5 am. During this time I found a website that was powered by users who would post songs that were nice and calm; perfect songs to fall asleep to. One of the songs I found was called “Lies” by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. I figured they were a band or something and thought nothing of it. Anyways I loved the song and later found out it was from this movie. After doing some research I found out that the two wrote all the music for the movie which they won an Oscar for in 2007 I think.

Moving on…

It had been chilling near the top of my Netflix queue for months but I never could quite pull the trigger. Don’t know why. Maybe because the synopsis wasn’t terribly captivating:

In this charming contemporary musical helmed by John Carney, a street musician (Glen Hansard) in Dublin, Ireland, strikes up a friendship with a migrant street hawker (Markéta Irglová), and the duo ends up composing and recording a series of songs over the course of a week. The tunes mirror their burgeoning romance and help the young busker release his musical passions. The actors wrote the tunes they perform, winning an Oscar for their efforts.

I usually don’t do well with movies that are considered “charming”. I want someone to eventually get shot, stabbed, arrowed or told to fuck off at some point in the movies I watch. The really good ones can pull all of these off in a tidy 2-minute span. But still, I did love that song…

Finally I caved.

Boy am I glad I remember to use that thing that beats in my ribcage occasionally. There was something about this movie that made me wish I was a poor Irish street musician living with the crushing misery of a love lost. Because when the years of depression finally got me down enough an indescribably adorable Czech woman would show up and change my life.

At the risk of getting too schmaltzy I will just say that the relationship portrayed by the two is amazing. They are brought together by a love of music, which is really why I was drawn to it after all. Their cultural differences are forgotten with her at the piano and he at the guitar.

It’s not a musical, per se. That is another way in which the Netflix description is off. A musical is something with choreographed dance numbers where everyone on an entire city block for some reason knows the words to a song that someone randomly started singing on the sidewalk supposedly off the top of their head.

The music in this movie plays a part in explaining the story without a half hour of spoken dialogue about the past. He sings a song about his girlfriend that destroyed him; she sings about the extremely different path that her life took while with her husband. It works. For me at least.

If you love intense, lyrical music and a believable love story you will probably like this. Plus hearing his Irish accent say “cool” and her Czech accent say “mother” is worth the ticket price alone.

Oh, and prepare to fall in love with the girl. Goddammit. I don’t know if you’ll love the movie as much as I do, for which I am sorry…for you. I am in love with it. It was exactly what I needed to see at the moment I saw it. I watched it twice and will watch it many times more when I buy it.

And the music isn’t just ‘there’. The music is (to quote his father in the movie) “fucking brilliant.” You will remember parts of this long after it ends. Or at least I hope you will.

Score – 93

The Lucky Ones

I only found out about this on a ‘coming to DVD’ preview before a movie I rented. It looked like it might be a decent flick seeing as how it starred Tim Robbins and my #1 all-time crush Rachel McAdams. Tim Robbins doesn’t make bad movies after all. And if he ever did he is more than forgiven for allowing the world to see Shawshank.

So the story is about three wounded soldiers coming home on leave for a month from Iraq. Robbins hurt his back when a Port-o-Potty fell on him, McAdams got shot in the leg and Michael Pena took shrapnel to the dick. The story follows them on their journey back to their respective homes after the horrors of war. Not a bad concept for a movie until you realize pretty much right away that this is not going to be as good as The Deer Hunter.

About halfway through the movie I suddenly realized that I don’t care about any of these people. I don’t care that Tim Robbins’ wife is leaving him for no reason or that Rachel McAdams is taking a guitar to her dead friend’s parents or that Michael Pena can’t get an erection.

There was an easy way to set this up to make it so we care about these people…but it failed. Pena is a self-absorbed prick, Robbins is a surly wuss and McAdams is a fucking retard. Although I will say this about McAdams’ character; she was cute. Really cute. Southern accent and ditziness abound.

It ended up making less of a point about war being bad (which is what you would expect from a Tim Robbins movie) and more of a point about people in the military being stupid and joyless. I don’t think that was the proper point to make, myself. Nor do I think that was what they tried to do, but whatever.

It ended up being a pointless movie and a forgettable watch. I would watch Rachel McAdams club baby seals for two hours, which is really pretty much what this ended up being.

Score – 50

The Bourne Trilogy

I will not break these down individually in terms of a summary because I believe I was the last person in the world to see them. It was by accident that I even did, to be honest. I have never been a fan of James Bond-ish type movies. The only Bond movie I’ve seen is Dr. No, which was made roughly 212 years ago.

But I was recently at my brother’s house and saw that he had all three Bourne movies so I borrowed them. I had them for a couple weeks before I even started watching them too. I lost momentum in my drive to see them for whatever reason.

Then I watched em…

Fuck these movies are badass. And it’s not like no one told me this, I heard it all the time. They would talk about how amazing they are and my mind would just blank out because I couldn’t see Matt Damon as a superagent killer guy.

The third film (The Bourne Ultimatum) was particularly spectacular. Damon turned in some Assassin’s Creed shit in there. Jumping through windows, leaping atop buildings and crap. Insane.

When the Moby song played at the end of each movie I got chills. Lord. And the formula of the movies is bloody brilliant. Somehow he always knows the only possible way to get out of every situation. And seriously, if you have a gun, DO NOT walk up within striking range because you will be summarily disarmed and fucked up.

I was really hoping to like these movies, but I didn’t…I loved them. I am glad too. I feel it has opened up a new arena of movie watching for me. Hell, maybe I’ll give 007 a try now. I am badgered endlessly to do it.

When I got done with Ultimatum I wanted more. Robert Ludlum you need to get off your ass and write some more effing books. I won’t read them, but Matt Damon will own the world with his badassmotherfuckery for my enjoyment.

Score – 90 across the board

Since I was the last man on earth to see the movies, here is the Moby music video with the uncommonly amazing song with movie clips:

The Baby’s Room

This is one of the ‘6 Films to Keep You Awake’ movies from 2006. These movies are pretty much hour-long little vignettes designed to quickly scare the turd out of you. This one consisted of a husband and wife duo moving into a castle-like home that just reeks of ‘hey, a horror movie is going to happen here, k?’ The couple has a newborn son who, as you might expect, figures prominently.

The husband’s overbearing sister brings over some old baby stuff for them to use, including a baby monitor. The first night they put it into the baby’s room they hear a man’s voice talking on the other end. “I can’t take this anymore” he whispers. Even though you are pretty sure it’s coming it is still spine-tinglingly creepy.

The wife quickly tries to forget the whole thing, but the husband’s epic journey into madness is just beginning. He buys an infrared television baby monitor that allows them to see into the baby’s crib at night. I’ll leave you hanging there because I’m sure you just got a bit ahead of me just now anyway.

It ended up being a little confusing as many foreign films do because I end up paying way too much attention to the subtitles to make sure I read things correctly and not enough to subtle plot turns.

Anyways, it was pretty good, but nothing spectacular. It gives a couple pretty good spooks here and there but it’s nothing far off from what you’ve seen before.

Score – 70

Dance of the Dead

So now we come to the dregs of my Netflix queue. I am not really in the mood for “good” movies right now so I went down my list to something that looked like it might be fun. Nothing spells fun more than zomedies. By the way, zomedy = zombie comedy. Or at least they’re fun when they’re called ‘Shaun of the Dead’.

I went with a seemingly foolproof plan in launching this one from #185 to #1 on my list. That plan? Well, ‘Dawn of the Dead’ was excellent, ‘Night of the Living Dead’ was as well, ‘Evil Dead’ is a classic as is the aforementioned ‘Shaun of’. It seems like the word ‘dead’ makes movies amazing. So I decided to test it.

I won’t be too hard on this movie because it wasn’t made to be “good” per se. It was made to be a somewhat fun 97 minute distraction full of laughs and gore. But only one of the two is delivered. Guess which one.

Anyways, the plot focuses on a group of high school kids who are too lame to get dates to the prom. Did I mention that the town they live in is next to a nuclear power plant? K, moving on…

These four guys decide to go out and investigate the local graveyard for some reason that I either cannot or don’t care to remember. Long story short; the mausoleum is empty and the dead dude is now a zombie. Then, for reasons unknown, zombies start flying out of every grave in the cemetery like they were spring-loaded under the goddamn ground (:50 into the trailer). It takes quite a bit of leg strength to dig your way six feet upwards and then have the juice left to bust out of the ground like a fucking missile.

The old adage is that zombies have to be slow. George Romero would shit on you if you made a zombie that could run and all that stuff. These zombies aren’t ‘28 Days Later’ fast (though the things in that movie are not zombies, but rather “infected”), but they aren’t slower than whipped shit either.

The violence is campy as is the endlessly boring dialogue filled with geeky sexual tension. And also the sound of an electric guitar makes them docile and causes them to stand still as someone approaches from behind and kills them one by one. Sure…

The zombies make their way to the prom where they fuck some shit up and some of the kids die and some others don’t. I don’t remember which ones to be honest because I just don’t care.

If I had to sum up the experience of watching this movie in one word: “Wha?”

It was trying to be ‘Clueless’ meets (insert overly quirky, uninteresting Wes Anderson/Jason Schwartzman movie here) and failed. Ain’t It Cool News laid a fat egg calling it “A Cult Classic” in the trailer. Please.

Score – 60