Change Your Image
MakoSucks
These days movies just suck.
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againReviews
Oldboy (2013)
barely decent dumbing down of one of the best films ever made.
While I loved the original Chan-Wook Park version, I still saw Spike Lee's version as it's own, decent film,It starts off surprisingly well. It's modernized with smart phones, and less suspension of belief, but it loses steam and the pacing feels very rushed. Especially towards the second half of the film, the ending was so matter of fact, that you really don't find it all that shocking, emphasized by the lack of style. It wraps up in a nice little package. All that was missing was some happy licensed pop music at the end.
Spike Lee's film was cut down from 3 hours, and missing character development. You know, to make the viewer sympathize with the characters, besides Josh Brolin? Even with that being said, All the symbolism and mystery is still watered down, or spoon fed to you every five minutes. The original ending hits hard because it originated from a point of innocence in both the protagonist and antagonist's lives. This new and improved ending nullifies that by making the antagonist damaged before anything Josh Brolin's character ever did. What's really telling of how badly this missed the mark is that hey never even had the time to explain why the f*&# the movie is called Oldboy for f*&#'s sake!
As it's own film, it's still fairly decent but not worth watching again. Comparing it to The original though, I can't help but feel like Spike Lee's Oldboy has more in common with that Romeo and Juliet scene from Hot Fuzz, than Chan Wook Park's symphonic masterpiece.
Jon Benjamin Has a Van (2011)
Why did I get mixed up with little little Italy?
I might be biased because I'm a Home Movies fan, but Jon Benjamin Has A Van is probably one of the funniest shows on Comedy Central, and I've only seen the first two episodes.
It's a spoof on shows like Dateline and 60 minutes, except the second half switches to spoofing dramas. I was laughing from the first sarcastic opening montage, with the obligatory news team dramatically walking together scene, to a close up zoom of the van, that zooms into a picture of the van that's on the van to infinity. Once you see that, you should pretty much get what the show is gonna be about.
The first episode was hilarious. It starts off with a short interview with a guy who they mistaken for a post traumatic stress victim, who is actually a pre traumatic stress victim, who lost his voice screaming while thinking about going to war in basic training.
The second half of the show was a follow up to a story that they show you before the actual follow up, of their trouble at the border story.
It has little to do with the topic of illegal immigration or drug wars and more to do with the joke of pushing his producer over the border and leaving him stranded without a passport. Jon screams, "I SAID NO! ROB, IM NOT GETTING IT!" than he smiles and drives away, with the van's signature airbrushed ass on the rear doors.
The follow up is a year later, so now the producer speaks in a Mexican accent and misinterprets American sayings. In a way to apologize for the joke, Jon re-hires him as an interpreter since they replaced him with someone better. As they approach the border to Guatemala, he does the joke again and pushes him over the border without a passport, leaving his newly established family without a father. HAHA idiot!
in between each story are little quick sketches like Cash Stall, a game show that takes place in the bathroom, and if you answer all the questions right you get 100 dollars, but everyone just assumes he's propositioning them for sex so he never gets a chance to ask any questions. There's You Can't Shoot Here, where Jon goes to unauthorized locations to shoot... people until they say, "You can't shoot here." He literally tells them that he's shooting for "You Can't Shoot Here" and they pause and try to understand the concept and say ...well you can't shoot here, and Jon just tells them yes I know. or Thanks for being on You Can't Shoot Here!
There were a lot of shows on Comedy Central that tried to be witty, but most fell flat because they tried to run with these witty concepts without actually being funny. Like most comedy central shows, it would probably either be complete unwatchable crap and be canceled after the first season, or comedic genius and have a long life span. Jon Benjamin Has a Van is hilarious because instead of just sticking with a witty concept, it goes around it and makes fun of it with more funny archetypes that wouldn't of been involved with the original concept, so it makes it even more funny. BORDER!!!!!!!!!
Smokin' Aces (2006)
2 hours of dramatic piano music, and men crying.
The trailer for this movie shows a dude firing off two skorpion sub machine guns . That was the only good part about this movie. The rest of this movie is talking! When the actual gunshots do begin, it comes off so lame.
Here's an example. A sniper is firing from one end to the other on an L shaped hotel at FBI agents armed with usp pistols, with a 50 bmg rifle. The agents are about 2 city blocks away from the sniper. the agents, turn towards the shot out window, and fire their pistols, without knowing which window on this 50 story building the fire is actually coming from. What does one of the agents do when out of ammo? He chucks the gun at the sniper. A snipoer being two city blocks away from him.
The rest of the movie is men crying to dramatic piano music, and everyone dying. There is only 2 characters in this movie who you may consider good people. The rest are just hit men, and they all die, including one good character.
Now when some of these people die, it is presented in a very sad event, but none of this movie makes you care for any character, so its as if some random henchman died, and they are playing another dramatic piano score. Even Ray Liota dies in this movie, and you don't even feel bad about it. What a waste of a great actor.
Basically though, the only good parts about this movie is the scene with the guy firing the 2 skorpion smgs and the 3 "neo nazi" characters, who look like they should of been in Mad Max, But all those things can be found outside of paying money to see this mindless Hollywood dribble. the Skorpion scene is in the trailer, the neo Nazis can be found in Roadwarrior. All in all, it was a crappy, long, boring movie. Very similar to Crank, except it's actually trying to be serious.
The Descent (2005)
Descent...into AWESOMENESS!
Finally a horror movie that actually lives up to the hype, and goes beyond it. The concept alone, of being stuck inside of a cramped and pitch black cave is frightening by itself. Then they add these pale, white, bald and naked humanoid monsters into the mix and it becomes the best horror movie in theaters since god knows when.
From the start to the end, there are a lot of great scares throughout the movie. A lot of which is slightly familiar, but still effective. Than there's the massive amount of violence and gore. Its great! Pretty well presented and brutal. There are a lot of cool shots that really enhance the gore, violence, and horror of this great flick. The ending sequence was kind of out of place, but it was still a pretty good ending.
All in all a great horror movie, with a lot of gore and blood, with a pretty good story, and flow of action. Way better than the recent diarrhea of crappy movies, like Hostel, Slither, the Exorcism of Emily Rose, and all the other forgettable horror movies of the year. See it for an actually good horror movie.
Silent Hill (2006)
Almost as good as the game.
After all the hype, ads, leaks, and one stupid poster contest, Silent Hill finally hits the big screen! Silent Hill fans, High-FIVE! This movie isn't a scare a minute, roller-coaster ride through Hell, like I suppose the trailers lead you to believe. Which I think is great for a movie based on a story driven survival horror game. It isn't what Resident Evil was. How it was matrix kicking dogs in the face, and ultra bad ass type characters. This was more story driven, and less action oriented. That isn't to say that Silent Hill isn't scary, creepy, or violent. There are plenty of pulse pounding scenes , some of which I couldn't believe they actually put on the screen, because they were very extreme, sadistic, and not exactly parent friendly. It isn't a fast paced slasher, or like anything as of late that has been released in theaters, but more of a slower paced Japanese ghost story. Its kind of like watching someone playing Silent Hill, except really really fast.
There were a few parts to the movie I didn't like though. The dialog wasn't the good. It was alright, but it just didn't seem natural to me, but its still levels above the games voice overs. Maybe they were trying to stay true to the source material. The story didn't completely follow the games story, but still it is very damn close, which is great, just a few parts stray, and contradict with the game universe, and that bothered me a bit. They tacked on "ph" on it, which is kind of a double edged sword. It doesn't make any sense for him to be in this one, but he is one of the better characters in the game, so yeah its bad and good. All very small annoyances, that I can live with.
So I of course loved the movie. It had a lot of envelope pushing scenes that totally amazed me, and was very interesting, and it was based on SILENT HILL! This movie is the best video game based movie I have seen, even better than Mortal Kombat! Oh and of course, it contains some of the best music from the silent hill games, and video games in general!
Slither (2006)
Night of the Creeps - anything that made it good + cg= Slither
So from the people that brought us the Dawn of the Dead remake, and the scooby doo movies, comes Slither! A gory, sick, and funny romp of fun and extreme scaryness! What a load of LIES! First of all, all the gore in this one is nothing but Computer generated nonsense. It wasn't sick, or anything, it was just...there. Everything was pretty tame, and fake. The "funny" bits were mainly adding curse words to the dialogue that half sounded like annoying audience heckling. Oh also everyone is a hick in this movie. The only funny parts were the shameless attempts at horror. a small shadow, the size of one of the slugs, passes by, that you could barley notice, and a jump in the music scares you. It was nothing more than a lame attempt at a Shawn of the dead type of comedy movie, with even lamer attempts of horror.
The only thing close to a redeeming factor for this crapfest, was a useless, small clip of the Toxic Avenger. The part where the nerd sticks the mop in the jacuzzi. LLoyd Kaufman also made a cameo as an extra. No dialogue at all. just him as a drunk. Wasted elements.
SLither was nothing more than another "remake" Like Dawn of the Dead 04, except it didn't keep the name of the original. Instead of wasting your time and money on this, go watch what this movie tried to rip off of, Night of the Creeps! Or a Troma movie. Thats all this movie made me feel like, was to go watch more troma movies. Those are funny, gory, extreme, and entertaining, all opposites of Slither.
Big Momma's House 2 (2006)
It doesn't continue the saga of Big Mama, like I would of hoped.
Why is there a need for pointless movies such as these? Big Mama's House, the original, was an entertaining movie for me. It made me laugh quite a bit, and I was well entertained while watching it.
Whose idea was it to even make a sequel to Big Mama's House in the first place? I mean it had a real ending. All the strings were tied in the original. How were they going to continue the Big Mama's House epic? Sadly that impossible task, of making a sequel to an already Oscar worthy movie meet, or exceed its predecessor, was in fact, impossible. They seemed to turn the greatest movie ever into, a family friendly version. It was trying the whole time to be wholesome and entertaining, but it was terrible. The things that I laughed at weren't supposed to be funny. Like terrible acting, and just ridiculous, only happens in movies type of deals. There is nothing entertaining about this movie.
I predicted that this movie would be bad. A sequel to a movie that needs no sequel? Bad. Well this movie isn't bad4 actually, its terrible. Another crappier sequel from a crappy movie. Oh also never let your date decide on your movie. Ever.
The Backyard (2002)
a terrible wrestling highlight reel, and an even worse documentary
I rented this movie, after hearing Chris Gore saying something to the effect of "five stars!" on that Attack of the Show show. Well when I turned around the DVD and it showed the 3 stages of hell, well I had to buy it. Just to see the spectacle of a mother yelling at her son to drop her other son into a flaming pit.
I wasn't expecting ECW or CZW for an hour and eighteen minutes, but I was expecting at least a summarized version of what seemed to be the main highlight of this movie. Well sadly there wasn't anything like that. The 3 stages of death part happens right from the beginning, and its pretty much downhill from there. Nothing really happens in this documentary. It was pretty raw, bare and unbiased. Not a bad thing, but there is a narrator in this one. You'd expect him to have opinions on the subject of this documentary, but he doesn't. Which would of been nice to have, a message or reason for this doc.There was no real reason to have a narrator, there should of been just text explaining some of the less obvious scenes.
It doesn't really explain the lives of these wrestlers either. It shows a few moments of some dramatic scenes, which sound interesting, but the reality isn't as great as it sounds. For instance mom watching her son wrestle with light bulbs and tacks, for the first time, at a public park. instead of seeing her reaction to the wrestling, They show her reacting to the camera, instead of say a interview later on, or just actually witnessing her reactions.
Legitamit document wise, this one ain't. The source material was flimsy to begin with. Nothing truly profound or interesting really happens. No conclusion to a few of the more interesting stories, No real point or final thought to backyard wrestling, edited together badly, and its and its basically a cheap, failed rip off of Beyond the Mat.
Wrestling wise, this is pretty boring. the better bumps are at the beginning, and slowly become less amazing and shocking. If you have seen Japanese wrestling, Indie wrestling, or even Backyard Wrestling Dvds, than this wont shock and awe you. If you want wrestling don't make the same mistake I did and see this one. Go get some CZW ECW or XPW Dvds instead.
The only thing I got out of this documentary was how stupid people can be. Not for supporting self mutilation or doing dangerous stunts, but their reasoning for committing these acts. The backyarders seem stupid for wrestling. Most of them are jobless, and probably have a few issues in their head, and wrestling is a type of therapy for them. Than the supporters seem even more idiotic. Mothers basically take the whole "if ya cant beat em join em" reasoning to cope with the fact that their sons are basically killing themselves. School authority figures support their students in their dangerous stunts because its an alternative to joining gangs and to a lesser extend doing drugs, which is kinda funny since that segment took place in a rural town, where like people live 20 miles from one another. People are stupid. Thats what I extracted from this documentary.
If you want to see the reasoning and thoughts to someone brutalizing themselves in wrestling and basically what the back of this DVD promises, get UNSCARRED: the Life of Nick Mondo. Its more amazing, and interesting than the Backyard, and a lot more entertaining. Oh and its actually good.
964 Pinocchio (1991)
An hour and a half of running and screaming, that is amazing.
I saw this movie at Best Buy, and remembered it being an unearthed films release. I still wasn't going to buy it until I flipped it over and saw a picture of a white faced, bleeding from the mouth, freak running down the streets with a few thousand confused people looking on. Knowing that those people weren't extras, I had to buy this movie.
This movie is pure insanity. At first It looks like it might be somewhat normal, everything makes sense, it seems almost cute...almost...Suddenly the whole movie takes a turn for the "worst" and all that wholesomeness we just witnessed turns into something completely opposite. A lot of people compare this movie to Tetsuo for some reason, which is like comparing apples to oranges, but that being said, 964 Pinocchio will make you appreciate Tetsuos coherent storyline. As insane as that may sound.
I don't want to mention, nor could I fully explain the plot, because that would ruin most of this movie. if your sick of your everyday Hollywood remakes and want a totally new experience, and like a bit of wackiness mixed in with your bizarre freak out films, than you will love this unique movie.
Domino (2005)
For a movie about a bounty hunter, there sure is very little bounty hunting involved.
First the bad. I thought this movie was gonna blow from the first time I saw the trailer. Than I kinda second guessed myself after realizing it was the same guy who directed Man on Fire, which I thought was a great movie. So I went with friends to Hollywood and didn't know what movie we were going to see till it started. Within the first 3 minutes I figured this was Domino and the downfall of this movie is going to be all the "imovie" effects. I was hoping some good would come out of this whole string of music video scenes and 3 bad-ass tough guy main characters, but no. Near the end of it I was ripping at my face because of the constant super ridiculous scenes. Not to mention Domino's constant tough girl, metaphorical, monotone, English accented narration. Not that there's anything wrong with an English accent just combining that with a monotonous voice is a terrible combination. Anyways After Tom Waits pops out of nowhere with that book in his hand...right after what looked like artsy jeans commercial, I was about ready to walk out of the theater. I stayed though because I payed 10 bucks for this junk at the Mann Chinese Theatre, and my friends would of stayed. After the movie was over and we left the theater I was disoriented and felt like I just saw a normal movie while on 12 different mind bending drugs.
Now the good. Christopher Walken is in it, and as usual plays his part perfectly. Keira Knightly is hot in this one and also topless in this one. Thats it. Oh and at the end there is a surprise cameo appearance by Willem Defoe right before the credits roll.
If you liked Man on Fire, you might like this. Might. If you saw Man of Fire and thought all the distorted effects and odd subtitles were too much, then you Will hate Domino.
Jackhammer (2004)
Don't waste your money or time with this steaming load.
I rented Jackhammer Massacre, after hearing the first half was good. I would give it a chance since i heard there were a few good gore scenes, and Rachel Rotten and Her only other partner in a sex scene, Rob Rotten were in this. I figured well if this movie is a total waste of time at least there's going to be a sex scene with a hot girl in this movie. God was I wrong. It starts in the middle of the story for some reason,In some kind of construction company warehouse, with Jack the junkie, the "Jason" of this "movie," getting pushed around by some pushers, and injected with some PCP/crack hypodermic in an attempt to kill Jack but instead its suggested that it makes him insanely stronger and insanely insane. Well Jack wakes up and kills one of them with.....A JACKHAMMER! Woah didn't see that coming.
Now this first gore scene was possibly the third best effect in the movie. They pull this Jackhammering off with a fake jackhammer being jiggled around in the pushers mouth, while he spits out some blood, a cut to Jacks smiling face, back to the Jackhammer which is being shaken by Jack into a fake smashed head. That was pretty cheesy. It is so ridiculous it was funny. But after that its all downhill from there.
The story goes back 3 years or so which shows how Jack becomes a junkie, where you see a topless Rachel Rotten, and thats it. I was sadly disappointed at this point, as the deciding factor for me renting this move, of a sex scene was non existent. I saw pics of her topless in this movie around the net, so I figured sex scene, but they just added in the boob shot, just so they can have a boob shot. they could of saved money and used an extra instead of a porn-star, and used that money for better effects, better actors, or a better script. Forward 1 year and then back to the jackhammer to the face scene. The rest of the movie, Id say 3 quarters of it takes place in that construction company building. Its more of a shack than a building. Anyways, Jack gets delusional and sees his friends ghost. he overdosed and Jack lets him die in the flashback scenes, so he wont get in trouble with the law. I read that this ghost pats Jack on the back every time he kills someone, which I thought was genius, but he just complains and commands Jack to kill. near the end of the movie some characters are introduced that you don't know crap about. They just come to the construction warehouse and they get killed. You are supposed to care about these people, but how can you when they just pop out of nowhere? So basically everyone gets killed except the girl of the group, and Jacks lesbian sister, who came to help jack, but got locked up in a closet after the ghost told Jack she was really "one of them". So during the "climax of the movie" Jack is about to kill the girl, his extension cord gets pulled out of the Jackhammer by somebody. Jack decides to "Choke the the bitch." his sister pops out and stabs jack in the back with the drill bit of the jackhammer. She then slaps him with the drill bit, and he falls of the building top, where the scene was taking place. The ghost tells Jack to get up after falling off a 3 story building. The 2 girls walk out of the building, and they see that jacks body is missing! OH NOS! camera does a close up of the girls faces, they scream. credits roll. That is an original, and unexpected ending.
This movie is terrible in every aspect. The acting is terrible, the lines are read as if off from a cue card. The plot and story, are too broad that you have to use your imagination to fill in certain plot holes. The only slightly OK parts from this movie are the first jackhammer smash, a scene that suggests that Jack shoves his weapon up his lesbian sister's girlfriend's crack, which had no visual shot of this, but the idea was funny as hell. and a scene where Jack slams a guys face with the side of the jackhammer, and his brains pop out, but the way its pulled off is terrible. This movie has an OK concept which if elaborated upon, could of been a great movie. But it gets pulled off like a train wreck. Ignore this movie at all costs. You and your friends could get more entertainment out of making your own no budget movie than watching this load, which looks like it was make by a group of friends making a low budget movie.