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LAMB #393

Large Association of Movie Blogs

1001 Movies Club

Grade Scale

  • A+: Never say never
  • A: A masterpiece
  • A-: A near-masterpiece
  • B+: Very good movie
  • B: Good movie but some minor flaws
  • B-: Pretty good but some flaws
  • C+: Slightly above average
  • C: Average
  • C-: Mediocre
  • D: Bad movie!!!
  • F: Atrocious, avoid at all cost!

Movie Review: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)

taking_of_pelham_one_two_three_ver4

Directed by Tony Scott, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is a remake crime thriller that was released back in June 2009. The plot of the movie is quite simple: Armed men lead by a man named Ryder (John Travolta) take control of a New York City subway train and hold its hostages for a ransom. MTA dispatcher Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) ends up being the guy who has to talk to the bad guys.

There is nothing really glaringly wrong with Pelham 1 2 3, it’s a decently entertaining movie with some good dialogue between the two co-stars. It’s even unintentionally funny while trying to be serious. The part where Denzel’s wife ask him to bring home a gallon of milk to make sure he doesn’t die, that was hilarious! The performances are unspectacular but solid. Both John Travolta and Denzel Washington have seen better days but for the most part, there is nothing to complain about. Good old John Turturro does a solid job as a NYPD negotiator. Something that really annoyed me was some of Tony Scott quirks. For example, he will literally  rotate a camera around characters in the middle of a dialogue for minutes at a time which was very very annoying after the 18th time. Plainly stated, this movie felt like Tony Scott just got a video camera for Christmas and he is playing with it for the first time ever.

Quite surprisingly, this movie’s budget was $100 million which is quite a high amount for what we (don’t) see on-screen: no big explosions, a few cars rolling over, not even any expensive CGI or a train going belly up. The movie did not do so well at the box office with only $65 million at the US box office. (My criteria is at a minimum to break even with the film budget to be a minor hit)

Entertaining summer movie but for a thriller, it’s just not that thrilling.

C+

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Movie Review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Megan Fox, Shia LaBeouf et al. running for their lives
The latest Transformers is the paramount of light and fluffy entertainment. Brilliant action scenes, (very) cheap comedy and romance, pretty ladies on almost every frame, big robots fighting each other all day long, tons of military hardware blowing shit up, and absence of any plot whatsoever.

No synopsis to the movie because there is essentially no story worth summarizing here.

Positives: The movie is action packed, from beginning to end. The fight scenes are actually viewable this time around. One complaint from the previous movie was that the action was too fast and blurry and most people had no idea who was actually beating the shit out of whom. Optimus Prime taking out those three Decepticons early on is a highlight. Second, you actually get that for 147 minutes. In these tough economic times, you are getting some bang for the bucks. Finally the movie is just one giant eye candy: Explosions, robots hammering each other, military hardware, and Megan Fox! Unlike the previous movie, you will get to have Megan Fox on the screen 146 minutes out of 147. Even though any half respectable man would be protective of his lady and ditch her at the first occasion so she can actually live to see another day, Sam Witwicky doesn’t seem to care enough about her to do so. This results in having Megan Fox running around with him although she doesn’t bring anything whatsoever to the story. I’m sure not one to complain.

Negatives: Some of the cheap comedy and all of the romance made me cringe enough to want to kill a chicken! Acting wise, props go to John Turturro for playing the psychotic former-Agent Simmons. Just about everyone else was going with the flow at best as the freaking robots upstaged the real actors!!! If you have watched Disturbia or Eagle Eye, you will notice Shia LaBeouf is exactly the same character in every movie. Megan Fox has very limited range and has troublesome issues delivering lines in a credible and assertive way which really hurt the romance part of the movie. The hallmarks of a good actor or actress is that you find a way to deliver sometime cheesy or terrible lines in a believable way. No one is asking for a oscar worthy performance but you have to make it credible.

Finally, well this movie will lower your IQ by at least 30% in a little more than 2 hours, and this won’t even be due to the lack of a coherent plot. The movie will bring you to Paris where a clown comes up to you while you eat escargot? You will go to Egypt where every frame has a camel wandering around. You will see a soldier radioing back to a command center in the US for reinforcement, and about 10 seconds later, a company of Marines with tanks arrive from the sea, and 20 aircrafts are strafing the bad robots. No one is going to go and see Transformers for its romantic story, cheap comedy, or to learn about the Egyptian culture but please don’t insult the viewer’s intelligence!!!

C-: Michael Bay’s Transformers does not pretend to be anything more than a quick and fluffy summer entertainment. You will be entertained and you will also forget about it the instant you step out of the movie theater.
More running while stuff blows up
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Rating: 5.6/10 (7 votes cast)