Movie Review: Idiocracy (2006)

Rating: B-/ Joe (Luke Wilson) is nothing special; he’s startlingly average, a slacker, and doesn’t seem particularly bright or capable of thinking things through any more than is absolutely necessary. His name is no accident, he’s an ‘average Joe,’ and no one thinks much of him or considers him to be anything particularly special. So when Joe is chosen for a military experiment and cryogenically frozen, supposedly to be woken up a year later, it is precisely his averageness and his lack of meaningful relationships with anyone who might start wondering where he had gone to that makes him perfect for the job.

Movie Review: Deathgasm (2015)

Rating: D/ My dad chose this movie and Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead for our horror film night a couple of days before Halloween. It’s times like that when my mom and I think he should not be allowed to choose movies, ever. Deathgasm is pretty much what you’d expect if you crossed Evil Dead with Beavis & Butthead, and if that gets you jazzed up, great. It wasn’t for me. The first ten minutes or so got me anticipating a funnier movie than I actually ended up getting, and the premise of a group of teen death metal fans living in a oppressive, bible-belt town accidentally summoning a horde of demons by playing a possessed song sounded like it would be… well, not Oscar-worthy, but a lot of fun.

Movie Review- Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2014)

Rating: C+/ The best thing you can say about Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead is that it makes the best out of a relatively small budget and is not nearly as bad as it could have been. That might seem like faint praise indeed, but in the annals of low-budget zombie horror, it is easy to offer this movie more leeway than it deserves. Yes, the sets, the costumes, and the action sequences are not nearly as cringe-worthy as other films of it’s kind and it is actually an entertaining, if not indispensable, watch for the first forty-five minutes or so, before it gets increasingly silly and crashes and burns at it’s blood-splattered finale.

Movie Review: Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

Rating: B+/ There was a lot of excitement in our household for the upcoming release of Hunt for the Wilderpeople. We loved Taika Waititi’s previous effort, What We Do in the Shadows, which has become one of our top movies to rewatch and quote. Eagle Vs. Shark didn’t exactly do it for me, but it’s abundantly obvious that Waititi has loads of talent and a knack for dry, sometimes borderline dark humor and eccentric characters. So it should come as no surprise that Hunt for the Wilderpeople, based on the book Wild Pork and Watercress by Barry Crump, is no exception.

Movie Review: Do the Right Thing (1989)

Rating; B+/ Do the Right Thing is the second film I’ve seen by Spike Lee. The first was 25th Hour, which I really enjoyed (I love me some Edward Norton,) and although I have heard many great things about Lee’s other films, I really didn’t like the way he lashed out against Tarantino and Django Unchained without even bothering to watch it (it was the maligning it without seeing it first that I really couldn’t stand, it was like criticizing the musical quality of a song you’ve never heard.)

Movie Review: The Truman Show (1998)

Rating: B+/ Bittersweet; funny but with a truly sinister edge, The Truman Show is a true original. In a rare serious role, Jim Carrey plays Truman Burbank, an affable insurance salesman who- unbeknownst to him- is the star of a 24/7 reality program broadcasting the minutia of his life to the world. The director of the show, Kristoff (Ed Harris) tips us off right off the bat to Truman’s situation. The public, tired of actors getting paid to display phony emotions to the camera, positively gets off on watching Truman’s unwitting participation in the show. All of Truman’s ‘friends’ and ‘loved ones’ are actors paid to rattle off lines and pretend they like him, even his beer-chugging bestie (Noah Emmerich) is reading off a script.

Movie Review: Deadpool (2016)

Rating: C-/ Loud, crass, self-indulgent, and with more dick and blow job jokes than a stand-up comedy hour commandeered entirely by drunken frat boys, Deadpool is an over-rated, interminable mess. You can practically hear the jokes fall flat at delivery, which is kind of sad, because you can tell it really really wants to be funny, but somehow it just keeps coming up short of charm and laughs.

Movie Review: Office Space (1999)

Rating: B/ I can’t relate to Office Space personally, having never worked in an environment like the one portrayed in the film, but almost twenty years after it’s original release this movie hasn’t lost it’s charm. Friends and acquaintances tell me that it is a spot-on portrayal of working in a bureaucratic office setting. And don’t let the fact that director Mike Judge created the show Beavis and Butthead deter you from watching this movie; similarities are limited to absurd humor, and the dryly satiric Office Space is much less juvenile than Judge’s crude, crass animated duo.

Movie Review: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Rating: A/ I haven’t read a Roald Dahl book in ages, but I remember them being among my favorites when I was a small child. I liked The Twits so much, in fact, that I read it twice- once to myself, once to my brother. Dahl is a bit of an enigma; he’s a brilliant storyteller but at the same time it’s hard to picture his children’s books being published in this politically correct day and age. He spins tales that are dark, often frightening, and sometimes venomously mean; fables to curl the toes of sensitive children.

Movie Review: The Bad News Bears (1976)

Rating: B-/ While the title of this film is The Bad News Bears, it could also easily be called How Not to Coach a Little League Team: The Movie. Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthieu) is a alcoholic loser and professional swimming pool cleaner who’s made a total mess of his life. Hoping to make a little money on the side, he signs up to coach a team of foul-mouthed misfit kids, with no intention whatsoever of being a good role model.