Jason Statham has played memorable favorites in Lock Stock and Two Smoking barrels and in Snatch. Which is why it pains me to see him in films like The Transporter (either one) or this film Crank.
Crank follows Chev (Statham) who wakes up having been injected with a poison that will kill him. All he can do is put off death by keeping his adrenaline pumping. A reviewer called it a crude combination of Speed and D.O.A. which would seem to imply that either of those movies was good.
Crank is painstakingly bad. It is so painfully overstylized as they director uses split screen shots, bizarre use of flashback and scene cuts that I was boiling with rage and wanted to shout at the director to just keep the camera still and let the images tell the story but then I realized that there probably wasn't enough good footage to complete an entire film and all this ornament is simply to confuse.
This movie can't even fall onto the time tested defense of at least the action was entertaining. The action was boring. There is no sense of pacing at all. The movie wants to be serious, it isn't. It wants to be funny, it isn't. Whatever the director was attempting, he has failed on every level. He like the director of Pulse should be taken to the woods and put away quietly.
Monday, September 04, 2006
In Heaven There Is No Beer
It is hard in good conscience to talk about Beerfest as anything but an intentionally offensive, desperate pandering spectacle but the reality is that despite being dumb, and I mean really dumb, I laughed a whole lot. The film follows two brothers who journey to Germany to place their Grandfather's ashes in the ancestral burial place and stumble upon a secret international beer Olympics.
They suffer humiliation and return to the States to train and return triumphant. They gather together a team together and train and eventually return to Germany. A fairly straightforward underdog story placed into a fairly conventional drinking movie. But there are moments in this film when I was literally in tears. I should probably be ashamed to admit that but if I stop laughing because I need time to breath then I must admit what I have just witnessed is in some way funny.
I've heard reviewers speak unfavorably about this film and suggest going to see funnier films such as Animal House. I assure you I never laughed at anything in Animal House that was as funny as when one of the characters wakes up from a night of drinking. I won't ruin the manner in which he wakes up but it was priceless. Perhaps the appeal to this movie is the exaggeration of events that anyone who has ever done serious drinking recognizes as being plausible.
I won't try to intellectualize why I found it funny more than that. I just did. I have no qualms about saying this was the funniest thing I've watched all year.
They suffer humiliation and return to the States to train and return triumphant. They gather together a team together and train and eventually return to Germany. A fairly straightforward underdog story placed into a fairly conventional drinking movie. But there are moments in this film when I was literally in tears. I should probably be ashamed to admit that but if I stop laughing because I need time to breath then I must admit what I have just witnessed is in some way funny.
I've heard reviewers speak unfavorably about this film and suggest going to see funnier films such as Animal House. I assure you I never laughed at anything in Animal House that was as funny as when one of the characters wakes up from a night of drinking. I won't ruin the manner in which he wakes up but it was priceless. Perhaps the appeal to this movie is the exaggeration of events that anyone who has ever done serious drinking recognizes as being plausible.
I won't try to intellectualize why I found it funny more than that. I just did. I have no qualms about saying this was the funniest thing I've watched all year.
Pulse
Sometimes you go to a movie because you are a fan of one of the actors or actresses who happens to be starring in said movie. I can give you no better reason for why I willingly went to see Pulse. I don't particularly like Horror films or Americanized knockoffs of Japanese originals. But I do like Kristen Bell. So I happily turned my wallet over and shook it until the seven dollars that I needed fell out and marched into the theater.
The problem with liking actors/actresses who aren't making top dollar is that they make movies that earn them a paycheck but aren't skillfully demanding. Pulse feels like a paycheck movie for young Ms. Bell. I hope it was a paycheck movie for everyone involved because if this is a director's artistic achievement said director needs to be taken out into the woods and disposed of in a quiet manner. I haven't even seen the original film and have the sense that it is being done an injustice.
The worst conceit being, what kind of computer illiterate retard clicks on a pop up!! And ultimately that is all the strange ghost virus is. Why can't the people just go in and erase all the harddrives with giant magnets? I'm not going to bother with summarizing the plot of this film, suffice to say I got my Kristen Bell big screen time and I paid for it, monetarily and otherwise.
The problem with liking actors/actresses who aren't making top dollar is that they make movies that earn them a paycheck but aren't skillfully demanding. Pulse feels like a paycheck movie for young Ms. Bell. I hope it was a paycheck movie for everyone involved because if this is a director's artistic achievement said director needs to be taken out into the woods and disposed of in a quiet manner. I haven't even seen the original film and have the sense that it is being done an injustice.
The worst conceit being, what kind of computer illiterate retard clicks on a pop up!! And ultimately that is all the strange ghost virus is. Why can't the people just go in and erase all the harddrives with giant magnets? I'm not going to bother with summarizing the plot of this film, suffice to say I got my Kristen Bell big screen time and I paid for it, monetarily and otherwise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)