Netflix Reviews #9

The crap fest edition.

Setup

I watched this movie one of those nights where there is absolutely nothing on and you just want to see some mindless action movie with some guns and some fists flying about.  Slow mo is required.  Seeing Bruce Willis was in this definitely threw me off, so I decided to give it a try.  The movie was directed by Mike Gunther.  He is a stunt man turned director.  I'm mostly surprised at the cast, though.  It seems Willis owed Gunther some sort of favor.  50 Cent is the "star" of this show and it is easily the worse performance of the bunch.  His character is devoid of anything interesting.  It's like a cloud of boringness follows him everywhere he goes.  There doesn't seem to be any passion that doesn't seem forced.  Bruce Willis was my favorite character as everyone else seems to be cardboard cutouts.  It was funny seeing Randy Couture in this thing as well.  Anyways, avoid.

2.5 out of 10   

Ironclad

Directed by mostly unknown director Jonathan English, this violent medieval action film deals with a Knights Templar (James Purefoy) who decides to join with aristocrats against the evil King John (Paul Giamatti) who has decided to forget about signing the Magna Carta and paid a bunch of vikings as mercenaries.  The movie fails mostly because the people casting this thing had no idea what they were doing.  Besides Purefoy, who did his job fairly well, Brian Cox plays a good guy... who came up with that?  Paul Giamatti hones one in with his performance here.  Its goofy and unbelievably bad.  I don't think I've ever seen him stink up the screen so badly.  Kate Mara plays the young wife of some other stuffy guy who apparently couldn't get it up or something so she falls for Purefoy's character in one of the most forced romances this side of Kim Kardashian and that basketball player no one remembers.  That being said, this is probably the best movie of this batch.  The action is gory and the battle scenes are alright.  By all means, don't rush out and see this, but its better than the other crap on this list.

4.5 out of 10

Cowboys & Aliens

Who would have thunk that this movie would be such dross.  How do you go from directing Iron Man to this movie?  The premise is really interesting.  Come on, cowboys and indians battling aliens?  I'm sold.  The movie leaves a lot to be desired.  First of all, Daniel Craig is completely uninteresting and seems just as uninterested at what is going on.  Olivia Wilde is there to be the only eye candy and hardly has anything to do.  The best character in this movie is Harrison Ford's Woodrow Dollarhyde.  He is crass, loud mouthed and just generally a prick, but we sort of like him.  Especially because everyone else is incredibly dull.  By the way... nice work in turning a great actor like Sam Rockwell into a boring mess of a character.  While the special effects looked pretty cool, the rest of the movie is plodding and uninteresting.  I'm surprised how much I disliked it, except for Harrison Ford.

4 out of 10

Friends With Benefits

I admit that I was incredibly skeptical that Justin Timberlake could act at all.  I'm glad I was wrong, because we get a young and talented actor that with some more work, could be a really good actor.  Not if he keeps picking roles like this one, though.  This movie looked interesting when I saw the trailer but it ended up being the usual rom-com bullshit that we are used to seeing all the time.  I think my biggest problem with it is that it starts completely anti-romantic and ends up being exactly what it was criticizing at the beginning.  Talk about a hypocritical movie.  I'm even more of a moron for believing for a second that this might be more than the usual dross.  Although I actually enjoyed director Will Gluck's previous film (Easy A), this one lacked any of the others originality or likeability.  Probably the best part was played by Richard Jenkins as Dylan Harper's (Justin Timberlake) father who has Alzheimer's.  I still think Timberlake could go on to do some great things while Kunis will probably stick to this type of role.  This one specifically is just not one you should watch.  Watch Love and Other Drugs instead.

4 out of 10

Detective Dee and The Mystery of the Phantom Flame

I have said here before how high I think of Andy Lau and his acting chops.  I think he is one of the premiere Hong Kong actors going at this moment.  That being said, this movie stunk of high budgitis.  Instead of going for an interesting story, we get talking deer and people bursting into flame from the inside.  Meh.  I just couldn't get to the story.  Maybe there was something that I was missing and the movie just didn't do enough to try to capture me and immerse me in this particular story.  The special effects also looked pretty cheap.  Now, I really like Hark Tsui, but I guess I just couldn't get this film at all.

3 out of 10

A Review of Bad San-- I mean Teacher

Bad Teacher

When I went in , I had really low expectations for this movie. The trailer did nothing to make me think that this was going to be worth my time and money. I thought the only funny scene in the trailer was the one with Jason Segel arguing with the little kid about LeBron James. I went to see it because I was bored and a friend asked me if I wanted to go see it. I wasn't expecting to see it in the theaters, but since I did, here's my review.

The movie stars Cameron Díaz as Elizabeth Halsey. She is a high school teacher who was about to marry a very rich guy and never teach again. The rich guy finally figured her out and Elizabeth is forced to go back to the school. It's obvious that she never really enjoyed teaching and that she felt that she deserved more. She's a bitch, a gold digger, a drunk, completely insensitive and really has no redeeming qualities... and that's the reason why I liked the character and because of that, the movie.

Teacher Amy Squirrel is played really insanely by the damn crazy hot Lucy Punch. She goes a little bit overboard with the character and I'm not sure how the kids are learning anything with the short times we see her interacting with the students in class. Justin Timberlake plays substitute teacher Scott Delacorte, an heir to a big fortune which Elizabeth is trying to seduce. We never really know if Squirrel is just using him or if she really has feelings for him, but I guess that doesn't really matter. I liked the scene at the bar with the band because Timberlake is sort of winking at us with his terrible singing.

Jason Segel plays Russell Gettis, the school's gym teacher. This is a character that really saved the movie for me. Why he was attracted to Elizabeth was beyond me, but he is probably the one that feels like a real person you would meet. A guy that takes his job seriously but can also let loose and have fun.

If only Cameron Díaz looked like this... Now THIS is a very bad teacher.

I think the movie's trailer kind of misled me. I never really noticed it was an R rated movie until I actually saw it. I thought it was one of those teenager friendly comedies that don't really take any chances and this one does a little bit. The drug use and the car wash scenes were interesting because I wasn't expecting them.

Jake Kasdan directed Walk Hard a couple of days before this and it was a movie that I actually enjoyed. He does a serviceable job here to get something that is an ok story and manage to end up with a somewhat funny movie. My biggest problem with it is that it goes a bit too far in terms of how crazy these people are acting. Nobody gets murdered, but you feel that given thirty more minutes, the bodies would start piling up.

In the end, this is an ok movie that is probably better than it had any right to be. I'm not a huge fan of Cameron Díaz, so I thought she was ok, but what I think saved the movie was the fact that they kept her somewhat reprehensible throughout. She doesn't undergo some great transformation after an epiphany, but she does start to see the error of some of her ways... of course, all this while doing some pretty reprehensible stuff. This movie wanted to be Bad Santa and while it failed to do that, it was still funny enough.

6 out of 10