Living in China means cheap DVDs are just around the corner. Literally. about 10 different DVD stands dot the area just steps from my apartment, making it very tough to come home without a handful of new movies bought for just 60 cents each. Since i've watched SOOO much (sometimes 2-3 movies a day), i feel i need to write some short reviews of everything. A lot of the movies also tend to be international that you might not know about in the states or films that just didnt go anywhere. lots of crazy stuff turns up at the DVD vendor stands and I have something of an addiction. (Most of this was dictated, so there may be some errors in the writing... just ignore them)

there are movies, and TV shows at the bottom...

Enjoy!

MOVIES:

Little Miss sunshine -- this movie was cute, not quite great, but cute. Steve Carell is very depressing, but the road trip reminded me a lot of the road trips my family used to take when we went on vacation.

Running with scissors -- another very depressing movie. It had its moments, but ultimately I thought it was a little bit too dark for my taste, almost borderline requiem for a dream dark.

Howl's moving Castle -- this was one of those wacky animated films where basically nothing makes sense. It was along the same lines as spirit it away, and simply was so weird that nothing made sense. It was, however, visually interesting.

The beach -- this was a fun movie to watch because Maddy and I were in Thailand at Ko samui when we saw at. It started strong, and seemed to have a good message about how vacationer zero is looking for something different but they all wind up doing the same ship they do at home, just in a different place. But it spirals out of control and gets really weird towards the end.

Pan's labyrinth -- this was a fantastic movie, and I highly recommend it. It was visually spellbinding as it alternated between the dark world that the little girl imagined and the even darker or more gruesome world of war that was her reality.

X-Men 3 -- I love X-Men, they can do no wrong. I really loved this action movie.

Treasure planet -- this silly animation adventure movie had its moments, and some of the characters were quite amusing, but for the most part it was pretty silly and obviously predictable and for kids.

The last king of Scotland -- this was a pretty impressive film, very powerful, as Forest Whitaker puts on an amazing performance. I'm not going to knock it because it was based on a true story, but seriously, the kid is such a tool and a PDA for doing all the things that he did, that he almost deserved what happened to him.

Flight plan -- I love Jodie Foster, but this was just a pretty stupid movie. I mean seriously, how does anybody actually kidnap a girl on an airplane with nobody noticing. oops, I just ruined it for you.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 -- another fun movie, and I love Johnny Depp. I don't care that it was kind of silly, it was fun.

Rough Magic -- this is a bizarre movie with Russell Crowe that really has no point, so I won't even bother talking about it.

16 blocks -- this was a fun movie with Bruce Willis with a completely implausible ending where everything works out for him and the other guy.

Mirror mask -- I barely got through half an hour of this wacko movie. Visually it was pretty interesting, especially if you are tripping on acid, but for those of us who are clean, it's really a weird, on interesting movie.

World Trade Center -- God for bed I say anything bad about a movie about 9/11, especially one with the name "World Trade Center" in the title, but this was a piss poor movie with the most ridiculous overacting and very cheesy moments. I realize that Oliver Sohn did everything to make this movie as true to the story as possible, following the entrapment of two police officers and their subsequent rescue, but it really was pretty bad.

We were soldiers -- this is Mel Gibson's religion meets a war movie. Every 10 minutes or so there was something about God and religion, and then the rest of the 10 minutes were filled with gruesome war scenes. It was a very exciting movie, but certainly not for the squeamish. There was a great line in the beginning, though, when Mel Gibson is addressing his soldiers and says something like "it doesn't matter who you are, black or white, Christian or Jew, we are all Americans... "or something like that. But he definitely said something about how we are all the same, even if you're Jewish, and he definitely said it very convincingly, as if he meant it. But we all know and Mel Gibson is a wacko anti-semitic.

10 items or less -- this is a weird low-budget movie, kind of like clerks, except with Morgan Freeman. Most of the shots are excruciatingly long, where a single camera rolls for five or seven minutes, as a whole dialogue progresses. I had to fast-forward through sections of this movie, and it was pretty bad and really boring. It's not as if I need action in a movie to enjoy it, but if a movie is going to be entirely based in dialogue with virtually no camera movement or multiple shots, the dialogue and acting better be amazing, and it simply was not.

The prestige -- Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman along with Scarlett Johansson made this movie really awesome and fun. While there are so many twists it will make your head spin, the setting and costumes are really cool to see, as they re-create magic shows from the turn-of-the-century.

Assault on Precinct 13 -- this is a basically stupid movie, but it is so fast paced and exciting that you forget how stupid it is.

Animal Farm -- I couldn't resist picking this up when I saw it -- an animated version of George Orwell's dark, but enjoyable book. This was one of those old-school animations from the 50s with lots of orchestral music, and very bad animation, along with a stupid narrator and virtually no talking from the animals themselves. I think he could have been good if the animals actually had voices and talked, but this was just absolutely retarded.

Perfume -- a guy has an incredible sense of smell and he kills women to capture their scent and produce the world's most amazing perfume. This is one of the coolest movies I've ever seen. It has us in Hoffman and it as well. The story is interesting and captivating, but the we creation of 18th-century towns where the smells were putrid, and trying to get actual smells across on camera, made this a delight to watch.

Rocky Balboa -- the final chapter in the Rocky story, this was a pretty bad movie. What was interesting is how it follows raki to when he becomes an old man. Adrian has died and Rocky open a restaurant in her name. What's ridiculous is when he actually has to fight somebody at the end. How the hell can a 60-year-old guy fight a young heavyweight champion without getting all of his brittle bones broken? That was stupid.

300 -- this was an awesome movie to watch as the Spartans kicked everyone's ass. It's basically like watching a comic book, but it is really exciting and fun.

Let's go to prison -- this was one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen. I thought it might be funny because Will Arnett is in it, of arrested development fame, but unfortunately the story is so stupid and simply not very funny, that I just can't forgive him.

Chapter 27 -- there are two really interesting things about this crap-fest of a movie. First, Jared Leto gained about 40 pounds to play the part of Mark David Chapman, the guy who killed John one. The other really weird thing is that in this movie, the guy who actually plays John Lennon, seen briefly right before Jared Leto pops a cap in his ass at 72nd and Broadway, is actually named Mark Lindsay Chapman. As far as coincidences go, I'd say this is a pretty big one. Anyway, the film basically follows Jared Leto during the few days leading up to when he shot, and in 1980. Much of the movie actually corresponds to parts of catcher in the Rye, which the real Mark Chapman had on him at the time of the shooting, a book which she was obsessed with.

Ghost Rider -- another stupid Nicolas Cage movie, but you can't deny that these Marvel comic movies are pretty fun.

The weatherman -- a little bit "about Schmidt," Nicolas Cage is pretty good in this film. It wasn't all that interesting when I watched it, but afterwards when I started to think about some of the messages, lot of different things fell together and actually made some sense. I liked the main message of the movie, that life is very much like the weather, you can't really predict it.

The contract -- probably the lowest point Morgan Freeman and John Cusack have fallen, this is a stupid story of John Cusack who goes camping with his son in the woods, just as Morgan Freeman, a convicted felon, tries to make his getaway while being transported to a jail. Of course they run into each other and the three of them develop a little bit of a bond. The movie is excruciatingly boring, and has an arbitrary and forced ending.

Flags of our fathers -- this Clint Eastwood Vietnam film revolves around a famous photo of four guys putting up a flag on the top of Iwo Jima after a triumphant battle. The story follows these men and their perceived heroism which turns into superstar status. I enjoyed this film. It was certainly a new spin on the typical Vietnam flick, see Mel Gibson.

Mission impossible 3 -- awesome, just an awesome movie. Although it definitely reminds me of 24 except that these guys can carry out orders in seconds rather than minutes. Fuck CTU, Jack Bauer should recruit some of the guys from the impossible Mission force

Bubba Ho-tep -- this is a bizarre movie where Bruce Campbell, of Army of darkness fame, plays an elderly Elvis in an old age home. It's really two stories that got confused and put into the same movie. The second story is about a Pharaoh king from Egypt who sucks souls from people. The idea is "the King versus the King of the dead", but it was such a stupid movie I couldn't get through all of it. What is interesting is that Bruce Campbell plays Elvis quite well. The story is that the real Elvis switched places with an Elvis impersonator as he was getting older, so that he can maintain a little bit of anonymity and get away from everything he had become sick of. So when the "real Elvis" guide, the actual Elvis kept on living as an impersonator until one day he wrote his head on stage and has wound up in an old age home. It's an interesting take on the Elvis story, and the script is very interesting in its portrayal of a guy in his old age and all the gripes that come with it. I felt like the whole movie should have been about that, but instead they threw in all of this garbage about a mummy going through the old-age home and stealing people's souls.

Riding Giants -- this is a surfing documentary and it is simply unbelievable to watch. Both the footage of people riding insanely large waves as well as the original movie camera footage that the surfing community shot of themselves back in the 60s are incredible to watch.

Baadasssss! - part movie, part documentary about Mario Van Peebles and his father's attempt to make a black power movie back in the early 70s. Mario Van Peebles plays his father. Basically this reminds me a lot of my own movie, it's a movie about making a movie. Things keep going wrong for them, the cast and crew are bootleg, shooting days are cut short, people are quitting, and everything is going wrong. But ultimately the movie gets made, and makes $15 million in the box office and launchis what is known as blaxploitation.

Bend it like Beckham -- for some reason my girlfriend Maddy absolutely loves this movie to death. But I thought this was the cheesiest, and I mean cheesiest, movie I've ever seen. It was like another movie that we saw, goal, but with an Indian chick who couldn't play soccer, rather than a Mexican guy who couldn't play soccer. Far from a feel-good movie, every other line made me cringe and the insane predictability of the whole mess turned my stomach.

Munich -- I actually watched the first half of this movie nearly a year ago, but was so tired I fell asleep. So I resumed watching, and I'm glad I did. Although the facts surrounding the whole story may be somewhat questionable, I still think it made an interesting film.

the tiger brigade (les brigades du tigre) - a cool French film set in the early 1900s about some crooked thieves and a police squad known as the Tiger brigade that tries to solve problems. At least that's what I think it was about, it is entirely possible the subtitles weren't very accurate.

The Brothers Grimm -- this is one of the coolest most exciting movies I've ever seen. Matt Damon and Heath ledger are really funny and the special effects are very cool, not to mention Terry Gilliam is awesome.

War -- a Russian movie about British actors who get kidnapped and sent to a prison camp in Chechnya. This was a really great film.

Hear no evil -- an extraordinarily cheese ball movie about a deaf woman who somehow gets involved with a stolen coin and Martin Sheen, who plays a crooked cop trying to get it at all costs. Terrible, dated movie from the 90s.

Crash -- this was an interesting film to watch since a lot of people really hyped it up for me. I thought it was pretty good but only so far as it is a good conversation starter, but a lot of the situations were statistically improbable on such an insane level that a lot of the movie came across as just absurd.

Babel -- again, lots of people highly recommended this film, but I was pretty bored throughout and felt that, just like crash, while each individual situation may have been somewhat believable, taken as a whole (i.e., Brad Pitt's children just also happened to be involved in the Mexican nanny wedding situation at the exact same time that Brad Pitt's wife gets shot -- give me a break), the whole thing ties itself in a knot when it's trying to make a nice circle.

The death and life of Bobby Z. -- this was one of the most pathetic and simply boring movies I've ever seen. Laurence Fishburne should really be ashamed of himself for being a part of this pile of shit. Paul Walker, of the fast and the furious and other nonsense movies, I can expect to sell out for this garbage. But Laurence, oh Laurence.

Night at the Museum -- I am a big fan of these stupid Ben Stiller slapstick movies, and I enjoyed this one as well. Owen Wilson was hilarious too.

The hitcher -- a stupid but moderately entertaining horror flick about a hitchhiker who is a real nuisance to a pair of drivers in the middle of nowhere.

44 minutes -- a pointless, but interesting and exciting reenactment of the north hollywood shootout in 1997 when the LAPD confronted 2 bankrobbers wearing kevlar and fired thousands of rounds of armor piercing bullets. Michael Madsen, Mr. blonde from Reservoir dogs, is in this one along with Ron Livingston.

The good Shepherd -- this was three hours, and although I watched it in three parts, it was really captivating. Set during World War II, Matt Damon plays a character loosely based on the guy who would create the CIA. Angelina Jolie steps in for a bit, as does Robert DeNiro, who also directs this.

The Matador -- this looks really funny from the trailer, but it was pretty boring and uneventful.

The right stuff -- a 3+ hour film about the early test pilots who go up into space. Shows a really young Dennis Quaid and Ed Harris, and serves as kind of a prequel to Apollo 13. A classic film.

Four brothers -- this was pretty fun, and not nearly as stupid as I expected. Mark Wahlberg is really a great actor and he does quite well in this role as half thug half good guy.

Conair -- stupid and even more stupid. I guess this was fun, but it's like watching Nicolas Cage's career take a nose dive.

Jar head -- awesome movie with Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx about going to the Gulf War as snipers and not seeing any action.

Flight of the Phoenix -- for some reason, I thought this movie had some surprise ending, but when I finally got to the end, there was no surprise, it just the stale taste of a bad movie. It was somewhat interesting, and Dennis Quaid is cool, as is Hugh Laurie (better known as Dr. Gregory House), who speaks naturally with his Australian accent. But I read that the original had a lot more impact, no shit.

Sahara -- a really cheesy movie

Anchorman -- I love Will Ferrell no matter what he does, and this movie is no exception. He is hilarious and I thought this was moderately funny. Also, I love how Hollywood, whenever there is a scene involving journalists, has to insert the phrase "I went to Columbia journalism school" to somehow give credibility to the journalist.

The fast and the furious, Tokyo Drift -- this one is a real stretch. I had never heard of "drifting", which is basically racing around really tight curves and requiring lots of skill to skid the tires all over the place, but I can't imagine it can be all have much fun since you never really get very fast.

The Bridge on the River Kwai -- this is an old movie about a POW camp run by the Japanese during World War I near Thailand where the prisoners are building a bridge over a river for the enemy and then the allies blow it up at the end. It was okay, but extraordinarily unrealistic. For example, everybody was so civilized to each other, and the worst that the mean boss would do to the prideful British general who refused to work, was lock him up. I realize back then there were rules dictating how prisoners should be treated, and certainly higher ranking prisoners would be treated differently, but this is a little bit ridiculous.

The world's fastest Indian -- Anthony Hopkins plays an old New Zealand guy who wants to race his motorcycle (called an "Indian") in California. It's his journey out of his little hometown to America and it was surprisingly cute and funny and Hopkins is great in this role.

The Great Raid - this was a cool movie about an american rescue mission - the biggest of its kind - to free 500 POWs from a Japense camp during WWI (ala Bridge Kwai) in, get this, PUERTO PRINCESSA It was a great film and just a wee bit more realistic than Bridge onthe river kwai (notice they are both WWI Japanese POW camps, and yet one is strikingly more brutal than the other... hmmm)

Miami Vice- so bad and meandering it doesnt deserve a review.

Ten til noon - a horrendous indie film about a ten minute period as seen from a bunch of different perspectives, all of whom were terrible actors spouting terrible lines, leading up to the murder or someone who we couldnt give two shits about.

happily never after --awesome animation film ala shrek that was a lot of fun!

the day after tomorrow - uh, sunday? i love this film even though it's so factually incorrect it makes my head hurt. but i love the effects and who doesnt like jake gyllenhall.

deja vu - denzel, you rock, but this whole "i can change the past with this wierd machine that sees 4 days into the past" plot is a bit ridiculous. still, a ton of fun.

death of a president - a documentary about the assasination of president GW bush. yeah, crazy and very convincing but sometimes a bit too cheesy, like when the secret service guy is like "this is our job and we failed... " yada yada, it's a bit strained. but overall a cool idea.

the pentagon papers - pretty cool film about Daniel Ellsberg (James spader) who leaked the pentagon papers to the press after he desperately tried to bring the whole "miscalculation about the war -- we're losing... BAD" thing to senators, his superiors, even kissinger, who all ignored his pleas.

primeval - stupid movie about a tv crew going to film a huge killer alligator in war-torn africa. but it has the guy from Prison Break (the brother who was going to be executed). and AGAIN, when the credibility of the female TV anchor who is going with them to do the story is questioned, she breaks out the line "i went to columbia journalism school," like its a punchline. clearly, none of the hollywood writers know anything about j-school and the job placement of alumni.

stealth - stupid but fun movie about flying fighter jets along with one with AI that likes to think for itself and do what it wants.

American Gun - cool film showing a few different perspecitves on gun control. a tough high school, a gun shop, and a high school kid who's brother did the columbine-esque shooting. cuts from one story tot he next, but the acting is good and it uncovers some interesting debate.

letters from iwo jima - very engaging film by clint eastwood - sort of "the other side" of his "flags of our fathers" film about iwo jima. this is from the japanese side and its pretty interesting.

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TV SHOWS

Deadwood season 1 - a little too slow, but pretty cool, good lines, great acting and wonderful set.

the Blue Planet - a BBC documentary series... absolutely breath-taking. i am amazed at the stuff they are able to film.

House - season 1, 2, almost 3 - i love this show even if it is completely unbelievable and formulaic. the lines are amazing, the acting is top notch and it's simply captivating.

Doogie howser season 1 - wow, how did this show get popular? what were we thinking when we watched back in the 80s/90s? it is so dated and so cheesy that its kind of hard to believe that its a similar format to House. maybe house IS the fullgrown doogie? but the ridiculously cheesy lines, cheesy theme music (oh god did the guy playing the keyboard only have two fingers?), and what the F is up with his journal at the end of every episode? what a terrible time he must have had when he red it yaers later. all the entries are 2 lines long and basically dont describe a single thing about that week, just the moral that was learned.

24 - season 1, 2 and half of 3 - maddy and i have come to the conclusion that this show is making is dumber. it really is completely idiotic and i'm not sure why everyone is addicted. they just keep rehashing the same information over and over again, with horrendous acting and dialogue that just gets you from A to B. the entire 24 episodes could make a boring 1.5 hr movie, but instead they make it an excruciating 18 hour series. maddy and i made up a drinking game for it, here are a few rules:

Anytime one of the following happens, you drink:
1) reference to time
2) super cheesy dialogue
3) keeping family safe references
4) anything the blonde chick says
5) using daddy jack bauer to get out of every situation (blondie)
6) going against dad's direct order
7) stupid plot shit - things that make no sense that seem thrown in to keep action going
8) bad music
9) everytime someone dies
10) anytime a new character is introduced
11) decoys
12) dumb questions that are asked
13) dumb answers to those dumb questions ("what do we do now?"/"we stick to the plan")
14) any key words spoken: nuclear, terrorist
15) any cheesy romances that develop

needless to say, we were pretty drunk through most of season 3, but whatever, we're sick of this dumb show and i have no desire to continue watching. F you jack bauer.