Change Your Image
flyingwong
Reviews
Naked Brown Men (2003)
Absolutely the worst movie of all time, this sets back the women's movement and all progress of the Civil Rights movement
I would do anything to have that hour and a half of my life back. I saw clips of this movie at the movie's official website (which I believe is down now, thank god!) and the misogyny, poor cinematography, and unrealistic situations (please! how many women are really fighting over the Basco brothers?) was for some reason was not enough to warn me not to watch this in full. I think better movies could come out of the ass of a pee pee joke obsessed 3rd grader.
Here's just a sampling of the cinematic monstrosity this "film" has to offer.
* The use of the sand font in the opening credits and such awesome use of Final cut pro transitions as the window wiper and spinning cube.
* The Basco Brothers doing a sorry ass "spoken word" set about brown race empowerment to preface the opening scene where the same boys are talking about bitches f*cking them. (Nice. You kiss your mother with that mouth?.... Apparently so, because "The Basco Family" is thanked in the credits.) * According to some of the press, these guys are seeking "international distribution" for this film. Though the best use of this movie is as a date rape prevention video for teen girls ("Girls, watch carefully, these are men you should look out for and run from at first sight.") Or perhaps it could be shown at a women's empowerment event as the video presentation ("Ladies, Don't be like the woman giving head to Dante Basco.").
* Gratuitous bare and not very impressive chests. For fans of gay porn, some of the shirtless scenes of the brothers together begs to be accompanied with royalty free casio music. The awful set pieces help too. You almost expect at any moment for Dante and Darion to start grinding on each other the way they keep describing in graphic detail how women want them. Thank god Derek doesn't take his shirt off much.
* The pasty white bare chest of Pauly, the guy whose acting guru must have been Pauly shore. This guy might as well have a megaphone the way he projects his lines.
* Dante Basco getting a blow job while his brother watches. Oh... you think I'm lying about this? She wipes the sides of her mouth and everything. You can't imagine how good this looks when shot in digital video. It's almost as sharp as Citizen Kane. I feel so sorry for Hilliary, the actress (presumably picked off the street) who plays the girl caught between two Basco Brothers. I can't imagine she'd want this movie to ever surface if she ever finds a legit career.
*Forced dialogue about "issues" of race in Hollywood. Big arm gestures used by the actors for emphasis.
* Poor lighting. Every time they get a visitor from outside, it looks like Jesus is following right behind them.
In short, watching this movie is like watching the Basco brothers masturbate in a circle jerk for an hour and a half.
As an art piece, creates a new stereotype of the hypocritical Asian American man. Seemingly empowered but insecure and misogynistic as hell when it gets down to it.
As a product of their acting teacher, Gloria Gifford, I cannot think of a worse advertisement for their acting program than Naked Brown Men.
I can imagine that if this movie actually found a distributor or play on the festival circuit, that it would only highlight the rep the Basco Brothers have as the cheesiest most over-hyped family of no-talents in Asian America.
Snakes on a Plane (2006)
this is like the showgirls of action movies!
I must say that watching this movie in the theaters must be done opening week when the big crowds around you are obnoxious and rude and screaming back at the screen as me and my friends were. Sneaking in beer and cashew nuts, and turning it into one big party helps too! Only then, can this rocky horror picture show of a summer movie experience fully be appreciated for the camp that it is. We had so much fun because we knew that everyone was going into this movie, not for plot, but for plenty of opportunities to laugh at bad CGI snakes, awesome Samuel L. Jackson oneliners for life ("I've had it with this motherf*cking snakes, on this motherf*cking plane!"-- elicited so many hoots and hollers from the audience), completely earnest acting in a totally stupid script, and a ridiculous ridiculous premise (damn that eddie kim for buying all those imported snakes with no anti venom available for miles!), and just plain out ridiculous fun.
There are so many drinking games that will come alive because of this movie. Like every time there is a different kind of snake mentioned in a trailer or screamed out in the audience or is said in the distant background by a passenger, take one gulp. And there's just great randomness with the characters. The Latina mommy who somehow is like an apothecary, the old stewardess who takes a bit to save that mommy's baby, the kickboxing guy who shows up out of nowhere to save the lady with the dog.
watch it for the obnoxious fun that it is, and do it when there are big rowdy crowds around you.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000)
A real amazing humanizing doc of a woman who you may have written off already
I think any documentary that can take someone who who has become such a one liner by comedians and written off by most Americans as a freak and make her multi dimensional, fascinating and compassionate has done it's job well. This is a very revealing and intimate look at a woman who most people never consider as being quite an amazing woman. At one point she gets compared to Hilary Clinton-- yes, it's a stretch, but both of them have been so publicly berated and were under intense public scrutiny and criticism because of the action of their husbands.
There is also some very strange/odd footage of jim and tammy's early days of evangelical TV broadcasting. It's pretty unintentionally funny.
the only thing i could have done without were the puppet interstitials which I think were a little too mocking of tammy. every time they came on i was like, "What the f?" but i guess if i find myself critical of a doc for subtley mocking tammy faye baker, then its succeeded!
Havoc (2005)
Is this supposed to be a drama or comedy? The "Showgirls" of the "Good Teens Gone Bad" Movie Genre
From the first line of this movie where Anne Hathaway offers the "deluded and jaded" rich kid line of "You wanna know how it is for us in the Palisades?" to her fellow rich kid documentary making classmate-- I knew this movie was pretty much the Showgirls of "Bad teens" movies. And I was right! Everything from the unnecessary dialogue about chips and nails, pretentious drug scenes, faux bisexual tension, and the drama drama drama rape scene had me wondering if Elizabeth Berkeley should have been cast in this had it been made ten years ago. But at least Showgirls is fun to watch. This was.... ugh....
My boyfriend and I rented this "should be a coaster" DVD and the first scene is all these irritatingly rich white kids "oozing" with hip hop street cred-- I don't know if this was supposed to teach me about how it really is for rich white kids or usher in the comic relief right off. It was very Jaime Kennedy-esquire except they were serious-- I think. Then they beat up on a bunch of kids of color in the parking lot, and actually kick their asses and escape before the police come. That would never happen in real life. I turned to my boyfriend and said, "Why did you rent this?" Even he couldn't stand it and walked out in the first twenty minutes.
Anne Hathaway (who is great in Brokeback Mountain) shows that every good actress has her day at the bottom. She is so annoying. Especially when she tries to talk all hip hop. And then when she starts singing R&b lyrics-- what was that about? I know this is supposed to be part of her persona, but please. I wasn't sure who I was supposed to be sympathetic for. Why I was supposed to care for any of these people? Was I supposed to feel bad for her being so bored and unloved? I found myself at the rape scene going, "Ok, if they learn nothing from this then this movie really has lost me." And the girls don't seem to learn anything. For some reason Anne Hathaway refuses to call the gang rape a "rape" because the two of them originally consented to going into the room with the latino gang members and being "initiated"-- I don't know why she wants to split hairs, or why she knows nothing about "date rape" but that (really horribly graphic scene) looked like a rape to me, and yet she goes as far as telling her raped friend's parents that it wasn't "technically" a rape. To me this is very angering and I really hope that women don't go around thinking that something like that is not rape, but rather a sad ass attempt to drag a terrible story out further. Was the intent of her defending the gangsters a way of evoking pity for the gangsters? For the girls to accept some kind of responsibility for being so stupid?
And don't even get me into the logistics...
Living in Los Angeles, most of the basic logic of this story doesn't make sense. For example-- the rich kids are driving to the "hood" after school to befriend the gangsters but in reality the drive from the Palisades to Downtown LA is at least two hours in traffic at that hour.
Why does Anne Hathaway show up unannounced to the gangster's house and try to avenge her friend's rape. Why is she still able to party and go out even though her parent's reprimanded her and should be a little less clueless?
Why is Anne Hathaway able to find the gangsters whenever she seeks them out? It's like she is able to find them in three spots.
Why do Anne Hathaway and her friend agree to be initiated into the Latino gang with what is obviously going to be a gang rape? Why do they want to be in that gang so bad when they are already hanging with them?
Anne Hathatway shows up at her friends parents house after the rape, they say, "we need some distance" (basically, "get the f out of our house you bad friend"). Then Anne Hathaway says all these things to discount her friend's rape experience, her friend is all mad and runs off and yet her parents still let Anne Hathaway run upstairs to comfort her while her friend tries to slit her wrists. Why? Why?
Why do these gangsters look and sound like they came out of the c-movie version of "Stand and Deliver"?
Why was this movie made? Why did nobody see how poor the writing was? How unsympathetic the characters were? WHY? WHY?!
Wanna see a better movie? Try Thirteen, Kids, Traffic or Showgirls.
My American Vacation (1999)
Excellent Family Movie, Heartwarming, great story, and welldone!
I had the pleasure of watching this film during one of it's public screenings. I guess it screens for families at a school in my neigborhhod pretty frequently. A great idea since it's not a film that I have to feel dragged to for my daughter's sake. It really is a FAMILY FILM.
I brought my mother and my young daughter to the screening and all of us fell in love with it. And found ourselves laughing on the way out of the screening! Mostly because we could totally relate to the characters, who are similarly three generations of Chinese women.
The story is about three generations of one family who go on a vacation in a goofy trailer. Tsai Chin, who was Lindo in the Joy Luck Club, is just as hilarious and collected as she was in that movie as the mother who keeps everyone together. (My mother who doesn't understand that much English was saying after how she is so like her.) And my daughter feel in love with the actress who plays Kim Miyori's daughter.
The film is beautiful. The scenic shots are absolutely stunning.
There are wonderful shots of Taiwan and then beautiful sweeping shots of the campground where the finally park.
I think it is being distributed on video and will probably purchase a couple of copies for my family and one for my daughter's school.
Finally a women's movie, a family movie, and a fun movie-- all in one! Two thumbs up!
Hollywood Ending (2002)
Classic Woody Allen, but a bit disappointing....
The premise seemed so interesting. A blind director who has to direct the one movie that will save his career. Except the people who helped pitch and trust him as director is his ex-wife and her new fiance who run the production company.
First of all, why the hell is Woody Allen casting his significant others so young? Does he think he is still 35? No, he's in his 60's for christsake. It was almost ok in "Everybody says I Love You" when he hooked up with Julia Roberts. But the guy looks so freaking old now, it seems really dumb for me to buy that his new girlfriend is 20-something, and his ex-wife is a vibrant 30-something. Please! Get over yourself! It would have been much more appropriate to bring in Diane Keaton and Jennifer Tilly to play the roles. Plus, I think they would have did better on stage.
Tea Lioni is normally pretty punchy on stage gave a rather flat performance and Woody Allen's classic monologuing seemed forced. In one section where he meets Lioni to talk about making the film, is this awful awful acting section on Allen's part where his gimmick is to talk really business and then slip into getting mad about the failed marriage. He doesn't have the acting chops to pull it off.
I didn't really get into the story and found myself offering a few laughs after Woody goes blind. I think he weaves the characters in well. Woody eventually uses the Chinese translator (brilliantly played by an Asian American actor) to be his "eyes" on the set when nobody is supposed to know he is blind. What sucks is Tiffani Thiessen who's role as the lead actress in the movie Allen's character directs, and who only appears in one easily forgettable and insignificant scene, and basically is in the movie to show her boobs gets second billing in this movie over the translator! How dumb is that?
The Woody Allen-esque metaphors are overly evident, and I found myself being able to spot the lines or phrases that would tie back in. Usually, he is much more subtle about his themes.
Not as many laughs, but enough, not too much acting that shines.
Worth a rental or a bargain matinee.
Freshmen (1999)
beautiful debut effort! i didn't clench my teeth.
usually when i go watch asian american stuff (i am asian american), i cringe at the following: preachiness, bad acting, east meets west simplified, the eternal culture struggle played out in a cheeseball way, overbearing asian parents and their kids who want to be poor artists, and references to food. yes, and this film had tiny pinches of all of these, but didn't leave me upset or cringing. I really think the director/actor tom huang, did a really great job of balancing the expectations of your stereotypical culture/ coming of age type movie and digging into the multi-layered facets of all the characters. There was San (Huang) the accultured son who wants to be an English major and has this guilt complex about not speaking Chinese and is made more aware of his "Differentness". Judi, the white girl from Kansas who you think is going to be this overprivledged ditz. Rick, this white guy who has never seen people of color before and manages to put his foot in his mouth through the whole first half of the movie, and Tonisha, the overworked African American student who commutes from Compton. Huang does a great job of showing all 4 characters arc, and has a great eye for detailing college life. there are some low budget glitches in this movie, such as some sound problems, scratchy film, awkward cinematography, and scenes were you can tell they were low on extras and had to spread them out through the lecture hall-- but for the most part, all forgivable. A great film for high school students to see.
Poetic Justice (1993)
ain't bad at all, changed my perception on a few things, not perfect
i picked a copy of this up at a yard sale last week thinking this would be interesting. And it was. I never knew much about tupac's acting, or janet jackson's-- and both were well fleshed actors.
Tupac's pretty attractive! What a shame he was taken from us so early.
Some things bugged me from a director's eye point of view. The trip the four people take to the Bay Area is supposed to be in one day, yet they make like a million stops along the way and there is always the same amount of light out and they stop at places that you would never be able to stop off at from the 101 or the 5.
Creative license I guess. And also people were hooking up when they shouldn't have.
I also thought some of the poems were OK... but then I found out Maya Angelou wrote them. Hmph, I guess we all have weak moments.
Overall, it's good, it didn't move me emotionally, it was just interesting. It was interesting to look at it as a study of how violence and loss can seep into our personalities, at least in the personalities in the movies. Sometimes the character's comebacks when they were fighting each other were more poetic than Maya Angelou's crap poems.
So lesson is, if you see this at a yard sale, pick it up.