Fully Baked Reviews

Chaos (2005)

2009-09-19T19:49:00.001-04:00

Release Date: 2005
Director: Tony Giglio
Starring: Jason Statham, Wesley Snipes, Ryan Phillippe, Nicholas Lea, Henry Czerny
Tagline: "When the system breaks down... someone is about to get rich."
Random Trivia: Rob LaBelle, who plays the bank manager, had a guest spot on The X-Files in Season One as a software designer who unleashes an evil A.I. Nicholas Lea appeared on The X-Files in Season One as well, in a guest spot in "Gender Bender." The producers like him well enough to cast him as Alex Krycek beginning in Season Two (a completely different character).

Chaos. A.ka. some movie with Wesley Snipes where he isn't Blade.

Woah. Where'd this come from? Straight-to-DVD? Rushed out after ol' Wesley went down for cheating the taxman? How could a cast this competent - Jason Statham, Wesley Snipes, Henry Crzney, Nick Lea, Ryan Phiellepe - be this bland in a heist movie? And how could I remember Nick Lea before Ryan Phiellepe? Has the latter fallen that far from grace? Has he even been in anything since Cruel Intentions? So what we have is a cast that hasn't done much lately, and Jason Statham. Statham's still cool.

I should probably put a disclaimer up here and say that a) this is probably a better movie than most cop/heist movies I've seen this year, and b) I haven't seen that many cop/heist movies this year.

It's pretty cookie-cutter plot wise. Statham is the tough cop who's been wronged. He got blamed for something that wasn't his fault. Henry Crzney's his boss, and does an excellent rendition of being boss-like. Phiellepe is his new partner, the usual young cop with something to prove. Snipes needs to pay his taxes... err... plays the bad guy.

What does all this boil down to? Weak explosions, weak car chases, weak script, weak characters. Oh, and there just has to be a twist.

I'm pretty sure every single plot element was stolen from another movie.

Damn it Statham was in The Italian Job remake, so this could have been good.

Fuck it bring on Crank: Holy Fuck Chelios is Unkillable and Juiced on Something Again.

Or Snatch 2: Snatch Harder. Or something.

In all honesty, Chaos isn't bad. It just isn't good. It feels like everyone came in to work, did an efficient, average job of things, clocked out, and went home. Routine. Formulaic. Some other adjectives I can't think of right now.

I've now typed "Chaps" instead of "Chaos" into a search engine twice. I'm afraid to look at the results.

That's all I have to say on this one.

Overall rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5)

District 9 (2009)

2009-08-20T16:20:00.000-04:00

Release Date: 2009
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Starring: Sharlto Copley, Vanessa Haywood
Tagline: "You are not welcome here."
Random Trivia: Shot for 30$ million dollars, it broke that in the first week. Neill Blomkamp's first movie. Peter Jackson gave him the cash to make whatever he wanted after the HALO movie failed to find a greenlight. The shanty town is real; the aliens, obviously, are not. Filmed on location in Johannesburg. Sharlto Copley, the star of the movie, has exactly one acting credit on the IMDB at the time I'm writing this. The movie? District 9.

I've got a ton of reviews on the go right now, but this one is the most pressing, for obvious reasons. Caught it the first weekend after fighting traffic with HalfBaked and it was well worth the wait!

You're going to hear a lot of talk about Neill Blomkamp being the breakout director of the year for 2009.

Believe it.

I wasn't entirely won over by his script - he wrote District 9 as well - but when his writing lets him down, his directorial effort catches the fumble, making District 9 one of the best movies of the summer, and along with Star Trek, one of the best Sci-Fi movies in the past few years.

And one of the few, lately, with a compelling storyline. And awesome weapons. Pay attention to that: AWESOME WEAPONS.

You probably know the background here already - Neill had somehow managed to be tapped for the HALO movie that didn't happen. Peter Jackson, he of the massive oodles of Hobbit cash, decided to say "Hey, Neill - here's 30$ million, do whatever floats your dingy."

District 9 is the result.

I don't want to oversimplify it, but it boils down to the apartheid, with Aliens instead of Africans. It's a look at how humanity treats humanity, how we treat the other, how we adapt to societies that are different. It's how we long ago ceased to be culturally relativistic (not that we ever really were) and instead react in fear and revulsion against anything different from ourselves.

In other words, humanity as a whole is a bunch of narrow-sighted pricks, and District 9 gives us a constant reminder of it. How? By using the most obviously simple setup ever (and oddly, one used rarely in the past, with a few exceptions, i.e. Alien Nation and V to certain extents): An alien ship is crippled and winds up on earth, for a change not over a major American metropolis, but instead hovering over Johannesburg, South Africa. It's inhabitants are quickly labeled prawns, for obvious physical resemblance to the sea creatures. They're sick, and seem to be simple drones.

Yet society never asks the obvious, at least, not more than they're obligated to. No one really seems to care how or why they arrived, where they came from, what life for them was like, whether they are in fact drones in some sort of hive society. No one asks how an entire city's worth of alien beings wound up on an advanced ship yet seem to have the simplicity of 10 year old boys.

We heal them because we have to, but the government is merely interested in their technology, and in particular, their weapons. We do what we can to steal this, and stick them in a fucking camp. When that camp is overflowing, we force them to move.

There you have the concept at its core. Humanity would rather adopt a society's weapons than any of its key cultural components.

The power is flickering as I write this, and the monitor continually dims with each burst of thunder. Cool...

District 9 is not a pretty film. It's star is not marketable; in fact, Sharlto Copley has but one acting credit to date: this. That's a huge advantage in this case, as he pulls off a believable everyman in the near future forced to react to events around him.

Which is key: the background I just gave you is unveiled in the opening minutes of the film. The story we see - which I'm not going to spoil - is not the story of the Prawns, per se, or how they get to Earth. It's the story of Wikus Van De Merwe (Copley), an employee of the MNU, charged with controlling - and, currently, relocating - the alien population on Earth.

It's not a pretty story, but it's an entertaining one.

My baked mind noticed the following, and I could be mistaken on a few points, but some of the cool things here included:

- the fact that the humans can understand the Prawn language, and the Prawns have learned to understand English - but neither of them really speak it. Perhaps the languages are too difficult to actually replicate for either race? Or maybe they can just manage a little here and there.

- Prawns getting human names.

- The cat food addiction.

- the weapons. Fuck yeah, the weapons.

- Well placed CGI that doesn't take you out of the movie.

- No vapid, obviously in the movie as masturbation material token hot chick.

I'll forgive the fact that the script gets a little too preachy in the long run. That's perhaps its only downfall. This is a movie I'll definitely be watching again.

Overall rating: 3/4 Baked (4 out of 5)

The Munchies - Food Review: The McGangBang

2009-08-10T14:31:00.007-04:00

Random Trivia: You can actually order this by name at some McDonalds locations in the U.S., although for obvious reasons, it's not on the menu.

Lets face it: Pot leads to the munchies, and the munchies sometimes lead to eating stupid amounts of fattening food, in one or all of the three pothead food groups: Salty, Sweet, and Fatty. Which brings us to:

The McGangBang. A quick Google search of this term will either get you a load of McDonald's themed porn, or the recipe to one of the ultimate munchie-driven meals out there; the holy grail of fattening yet satisfying food when baked.

A McChicken, shoved between the beef patties of a double cheeseburger.

The photo above illustrates the traditional concept. Food for fatties, basically.

The burger itself is a simple concept - lets combine two forms of meat into one awesome mega-sandwich. The variations, however, are nearly endless. The one key concept - you need to have a burger with 2 beef patties to allow proper layering of Bread, Beef, Bread, Chicken, Bread, Beef, Bread.

Extras like cheese, bacon, special sauce, etc. are an added bonus.

Due to two bouts of food poisoning I've had courtesy of McDick's, I haven't touched a morsel of food from them in five years, and that won't be changing. Luckily, there are plenty of other grease-joints that cater to fat-asses, those lucky people who never gain weight, and the chronically stoned.

Here's what we'll be reviewing today:

#1: Burger King Double Whopper Edition: A Double Whopper stuffed with a Classic Chicken Sandwich

#2: Wendy's Baconator Edition: A Baconator stuffed with a Spicy Chicken Sandwich.

#3: Burger King Double Stacker Edition: A Double Stacker stuffed with a Classic Chicken Sandwich.

#4: Lick's Pseudo Edition: A Homeburger/Gobbler Edition from Lick's.

Lets go!

#1: The double whopper is probably the most complex burger on this list. There's lettuce, tomato, onions, and a whole lot of mayo to contend with. I was cramming this in on the couch around midnight, and mess was a definite factor. The amount of mayo used has a simple advantage/disadvantage: For those with drymouth or lacking a beverage, well, it's juicy. It also drips ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE. I've got food stains on my shirt from this outing!

As the Classic Chicken Sandwich is somewhat oblong, I had to eat it down to size.

Given the size of the double whopper plus the chicken sandwich, this was very, very filling. I didn't eat again til the following afternoon.

Mow Factor: 4/5

#2: I love bacon, so this sandwich starts out strong on that merit alone. I also like spicy food so I went with the spicy chicken sandwich, which really does not live up to its name. Still, it worked out well. Far less toppings on the baconator - it's basically two beef patties, cheese, and bacon - made this much easier to eat. Considering I was mowing this down in halfbaked's basement, I didn't want to leave stains all over his couch... well not those kind of stains anyhow!

Taste-wise, this was also the best of the bunch. Fucking bliss. Beef, Chicken, Bacon. Every land-based animal I love to eat.

Mow Factor: 5/5!!!

#3: I took this one to the beach, after a night of smoking under the stars (well mostly the lights from the city blocking the stars out). Again, used the classic chicken sandwich which needs to be eaten down to size so that its shape roughly lines up with that of a regular burger.

This is the sandwich I really wanted to compare to the Wendy's baconator edition, as this puppy has a couple strips of bacon, and bacon makes everything better!

I was a bit let down in the end. The baconator far and away defeated both BK editions, and the Whopper was actually better than this. It wasn't horrible, but it just wasn't right. A bit too dry - although that took care of the mess factor - and the bacon wasn't really noticable. I also had a hard time getting this one assembled for whatever reason, which may have (unfairly) detracted from my enjoyment of it.

Since I can't fault the sandwich for being too high to manipulate bread and meat, I'm not docking any points for that.

Mow Factor: 3.8/5

#4: Very, very disappointing, and I love Lick's! Their burgers just aren't made for this. Plus, I had to break a golden rule, and have only one beef patty (removing the extra piece of bun so the sandwich went Bun/Burger/Bun/Turkey Burger/Bun). Too dry, and since the Gobbler is minced Turkey rather than a deep friend patty like a lot of chicken burgers, it just seems like an extra big burger.

Mow Factor: 1/5

Overall - take the Wendy's Baconator edition if you plan on doing this, fatty! Or try creating a different version of it, and let us know how it went!

Independence Day (1996)

2009-08-10T13:47:00.001-04:00

Release Date: 1996
Director: Roland Emmerich
Starring: Will Smith, Brent Spiner, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, Randy Quaid, Vivica A. Fox, Adam Baldwin, Bill Pullman, Mary McDonnell
Tagline: "We've always believed we weren't alone. Pretty soon, we'll wish we were."
Random Trivia: Adam Baldwin is NOT one of the Baldwin brothers. Advanced Screening prints of the movie were labeled Dutch 2. Dutch starred Ed O'Neill. Ed O'Neill played Al Bundy. Al Bundy is God.

I had to go back and check, but yes - Independence Day was the start of the Will Smith summer blockbuster trend. This basically progressed from Independence Day - his first real blockbuster (I love it, but Bad Boys doesn't really count), went to Men in Black - another huge one - then tanked with Wild, Wild West. After that, the summer Smith movies became more and more sporadic. Men in Black II got a lukewarm reception at best. Bad Boys 2 was trashed by the critics, but fuck them, I loved it! I, Robot was more shiny than intelligent, not necessarily doing Asimov a great service. Shark Tale wasn't a summer movie (it came out in October), although it should have been. And then there was Hancock, which we've already covered on this site.

This was the one that started the little Will Smith summer trend, however. Every few years, a big release from Will, and an album or single at least. Remember Willenium? Or have you drank yourself stupid in an effort to forget it? How about the Wild Wild West single? Still looking up services willing to destroy bad memories?

Still, this isn't a Will Smith vehicle, and don't get me wrong - he's a talented guy, when his personality doesn't overtake the actual picture. But here, you've got a completely awesome ensemble cast with Bill Pullman, Randy Quaid, Brent Spiner, Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch. Female characters were seemingly thrown in as an afterthought, but this is a "lets blow up stuff real good" boys movie anyway.

Oh, and it's pretty much single-handedly responsible for the trend of blowing up famous landmarks in movies. You remember the White House going ka-BOOM. You know you do! It was freakin' cool.

Random stoned thought - I would have figured that 9/11 killed off the desire to see landmarks destroyed in movies, but Cloverfield proved me wrong...

The script leaves various bands of characters scattered throughout a country - and planet, but remember, this is AMERICA, and in AMERICA, only AMERICAN survivors matter, so that's all we really see aside from the odd mention - under attack by an alien intelligence. They're big, ugly, and their technology kicks our ass. Not to worry though - we have a tough President looking to live up to the moment (Pullman as President Thomas J. Whitmore), and a hot-shot fighter pilot (Smith as Capt. Steven Hiller), plus... Jeff Golblum as geeky David Levinson, and drunken redneck Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) somehow teaming up to save the day.

This is half about the survivors of a vicious alien invasion, and half Top Gun with spaceships vs. jet fighters. It scores one for paranoid conspiracy theorists by getting us inside "Area 51" when the existence of Groom Lake was just entering public consciousness, and it looked pretty.

But more importantly, stuff blowed up real good.

Seriously it's brain-dead action, yelling, screaming, shooting, running, everything that's been in every summer blockbuster since Jaws spawned the phenomenon. It rips heavily off of War of the Worlds, The X-Files (which at the time had the public primed for this sort of thing), Star Wars (with a couple hidden references to the original trilogy), etc.

What more can I say? Well, sadly, this actually comes off as intelligent and realistic compared to the schlock that comes out today... and Bill Pullman made a pretty cool President.

Oh yeah - the Independence Day Super Bowel Ad is credited with being the origin of movie ad extravaganzas during the big game. So it has that going for it too.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Gruesome (2008)

2009-08-04T20:16:00.008-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: Jeff and Josh Crook
Starring: Lauren Currie Lewis, Chris Ferry, Cody Darbe
Tagline: "What if every day you relived your own murder?"
Random Trivia: The original title was Salvage; Gruesome is the international English title.

Gruesome. eeehh... kind of. What Gruesome actually is can be summed up as follows: A ho-hum slasher with tepid acting, a lead actress who has a nice rack, perky nipples and a cute ass (focused upon multiple times in order to keep viewer interest up), and a story-line that owes a fair bit to Groundhog Day, The X-Files where Mulder keeps reliving the same day during a bank heist, any episode of Star Trek where the crew (any crew) encounters a singularity of some sort, and that episode of Angel where Gunn keeps getting chained up and tortured in the basement.

Sort of.

See Gruesome, having little budget and less technical prowess and star power, tried to do something cool, and turn the concept of reliving the same day/experience on its head. It's just not quite there... Lauren Currie Lewis, she of the perky nips, is actually not all that bad in the lead role. The rest of the supporting cast is stiff, and the script badly needs some better dialogue and a bit of tweaking. There's a few too many pointless scenes that are supposed to be scary, and my half-baked brain (although no, I'm not him) has decided to inform me that pointless scenes are pointless.

On top of this, the finger-tapping-a-key on the piano score gets annoying after a while, and as a result, the mix of bland rock and generic metal during the few energetic sequences the movie has to offer serves as a welcome change. I swear, I've never been so happy to hear generic radio clones.

Back on topic. Lewis plays Claire, who has a vision of her own death so real that it freaks her right the fuck out. She wakes up at work - the nightshift at some hardware/convenience stop I can't remember the name of - convinced that it's all real. As time goes on, she remembers more and more, and we get... more and more bored.

There's not a single scary movie going in this film. The most I can give it credit for is Claire's eventual death - when we see the full length of her vision unfold - which is quite gruesome, so I guess the title is well-earned after all.

Chris Ferry plays Duke, the killer, who apparently has a "weird name" to those not accustomed to the American south. "The only thing that matters is what you feel... when I cut your head off." How memorable. I'll put it on my Christmas card.

If you're insanely bored or just feeling masochistic... nah, I still couldn't recommend it. Even the weed isn't helping.

Oh, sorry about the photos. They suck. It was this or take some photos of the TV screen, but I was lazy, the camera was far, and they're not going to help you much anyway.

Overall Rating: Buzzed (1 out of 5)

Collateral Damage (2002)

2009-08-03T13:26:00.013-04:00

Release Date: 2002
Director: Andrew Davis
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Turturro, Francesca Neri, Lindsay Frost, John Leguizamo, Cliff Curtis
Tagline: "Nothing is more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose."
Random Trivia: Due to 9/11 all advertising for the film was pulled. Terrorist El Lobo at one point dons a police officer's uniform which is identical to Robert Patrick's from Terminator 2.

Collateral Damage is one of those understated, underrated action flicks from the latter part of Schwarzenegger's career. It's his "anti-gun" phase (which, honestly, didn't last long once T3 came around) - he's never shown firing a gun on screen, same as with End of Days, another flick I liked from this era (the other one, The 6th Day, well...).

It's the story of Gordy Brewer (Arnie) - a firefighter, patriot, and all around good-guy, whose wife and son are killed in a vicious terrorist attack planned and executed by El Lobo ("The Wolf," played by Cliff Curtis), a Colombian terrorist more interested in blowing up Americans than shipping them blow, somewhat ironically. Actually, John Leguizamo gets that duty, as a drug manufacturer so westernized that he's looking for a hip-hop career before being blown away by...

Well at this point things are getting so damn muddled I'm not even sure. Brewer heads to Columbia looking for revenge, finds himself in jail with John Turturro as a perverted Canadian who works as a mechanic for the drug runners, gets his secret password, and heads up river. Have you ever noticed that, going up river, you always need a secret password?

Maybe it's the state I'm in but for a change Leguizamo isn't completely distracting.

Brewer eventually meets up with a local women and her son, saving their life, and oh, what a coincidence - it's the love of El Lobo's life! Arnie has saved their life where his own family, in the earlier attack, saw no such mercy.

I can poke fun at the plot quite a bit but in all honesty, Collateral Damage is actually pretty decent, and it did turn out to be one of the last times we saw Arnie on screen. Only Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines came after it, aside from the odd cameo.

Highlights:

- Leguizamo, surprisingly
- Arnie being Arnie
- Turturro in prison
- Old-school, simple action. No kung-fu fighting or overly bad CGI

I think, really looking at it, in an odd way, Collateral Damage reminds me a lot of Commando. Not Arnold's best, but solid action, solid entertainment. Nothing makes it stand out - but having sat through it, I have no complaints.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

BASEketball (1998)

2009-08-03T11:00:00.013-04:00

Release Date: 1998
Director: David Zucker
Starring: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Dian Bachar, Yasmine Bleeth, Jenny McCarthy, Ernest Borgnine
Tagline: "Two guys invented a game... and turned the sports world upside down!"
Random Trivia: The word "dude" appeared in the script 39 times... but was used 98 times in the final cut of the movie. Matt Stone and Trey Parker agreed to do the movie assuming South Park would be canceled. It wasn't. BASEketball is a real game, created by director David Zucker and friends.

I think the concept here goes a little something like this: you know how you have that basketball net over your garage, that you rarely use, because you suck? And every now and then you play Horse, or some other game that you come up with spur of the moment, with your own bass-ackwards rules and little or no consistency? Well, what if that game actually took off and went national?

Given how lame baseball is, and how much crying there is about fouls in basketball, taking those two pro sports - the two wussy ones - and combining them makes sense. Remove the athleticism from basketball so that it's just free-throw shooting; any fat guy can do that. Remove the... the... leave baseball the way it is, and combine the free throw shooting from basketball, stick it in a driveway, and let it catch on in the neighborhood.

Joe Cooper and Doug Reamer (Trey Parker and Matt Stone, respectively, of South Park fame) do just this, creating the game on a whim to win a bet at a party. The game takes off, and, due to America's distaste for overpaid professional athletes, garners far more attention than it deserves.

Confession time: I like South Park, but the first time I saw BASEketball, years ago, I stopped watching after about fifteen minutes. Looking back, maybe I just wasn't in the mood for a comedy, because the movie actually is funny, and, while absurd and offensive, it does have a point: overpaid athletes and greedy owners are KILLING pro sports. Do you hear me, MLB? I stopped watching after the strike year, so there's proof enough for me. Whatever happened to playing for the love of the game?

Soon enough, Coop and Reamer form a team, with "friend" Squeak (Dian Bachar, a pal of Parker/Stone who's done some voice work on South Park), a neighborhood league - and soon enough find themselves going national.

With national attention, of course, comes the temptation of greed, stardom, etc.: As Coop tries to stay true to his dream of a sport where regular guys get paid regular wages, Reamer is drawn to sponsorships and big money.

The usual relationship subplots pop up - and the heartwarming story of Coop dedicating some home run shots to a sick boy - but the funny stuff comes in the "psych-out" aspect of BASEketball (the game itself), where anything goes when it comes to distracting your opponent.

Maybe it's the high talking but I probably should have given BASEketball a better chance on the first viewing. At the very least, it's aged pretty well, and given how barren the comedy arena is today (does crap like Epic Movie even count as a comedy?), it's definitely a nice change of pace.

Oh, and keep your ears open for some South Park voices...

P.S. - nice job on the cheerleaders, guys!

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Species IV: The Awakening (2007)

2009-08-02T23:16:00.001-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: Nick Lyon
Starring: Helena Mattsson, Ben Cross, Dominic Keating
Tagline: "Irresistible beauty. Unstoppable instincts."
Random Trivia: The movie went back to the creature designs from the first film. This is the first movie in the series without Natasha Henstridge.

We're in porn-level acting territory here, folks.

Now, have I ever explained what I look for in a movie whilst baked? Either knock-me-on-my-ass entertaining, action-packed, and/or funny... or a massive amount of slutty looking chicks with no tops. Seriously. I'm a guy, I'll own up to that fact. And if it's a horror movie, combine that with gore.

In a normal state of mind, I'm much more picky, but seriously, that's all I ask when high.

And Species IV almost delivered on the titty aspect - almost, and yet manages to fail in almost every other way possible.

First of all - the original Species was horrible, yet managed to make Natasha Henstridge a house-hold name for about five minutes.

This straight-to-DVD sequel is Henstridge-less and puts Helena Mattsson in the "species" creature role as Miranda, a girl who never changes until she's heading off to school. Growing up with her "uncle," she has no idea what she is, til it hits like a bad case of acne at the onset of puberty. As it so happens, it turns out her "uncle" (Ben Cross as Uncle Tom, well Tom Hollander) has been administering shots to keep the creature at bay - shots that are no longer effective.

Upon discovering this, the pair head off to Mexico in search of Hollander's old lab partner, Forbes McGuire, who follows in the footsteps of Anderson Cooper as a man with two last names. He also has a ton of "species" creatures running around his small Mexican hangout; works that didn't quite go according to plan, mostly - as well as a few slutty species chicks including a dominatrix style chick with a split tongue who likes to play naughty nun.

At this point, Miranda's creature side comes out, her and the slutty nun go toe-to-toe, and uncle Hollander - who is more like daddy, having created her - tries to find a cure, only to be told by Forbes that she's really just dying. Of old age, no less.

But wait! There's a cure! We can rebuild her.

Too bad she comes back as an evil skank.

Yeah, I pretty much just gave away the ending, but really, this isn't even worth watching unless desperate. Which, apparently, I was.

Overall Rating: Buzzed (1 out of 5)

Family Guy: Stewie Griffin - The Untold Story (2005)

2009-08-02T16:30:00.005-04:00

Release Date: 2005
Director: Pete Michels & Peter Shin
Starring: Seth McFarlane, Seth Green, Alex Borstein, Mila Kunis, Mike Henry, Lori Alan, Drew Barrymore, Will Sasso, Adam West, Patrick Warburton, Michael Clarke Duncan, Tori Spelling.
Tagline: "88 Minutes of Pee-in-Your-Pants Fun!"
Random Trivia: Will Sasso has done a couple of Family Guy episodes. He was also in an episode of The X-Files and Doctor Who. Cooool. He got his start on a Canadian show called Madison, which I actually remember. What's the connection? Well, Will Sasso showed up on WWE wrestling, as did Family Guy regular Seth Green. Both of them were involved with Triple H. Why do I even know this?!?!?

Yet another Family Guy review featuring incredible YouTube Clip-O-Vision!

I'd like to start this off with a rant. Stewie's gay. We get it. He's awkward and effeminate and inappropriately pervy at times. He has a penchant for cross-dressing that's borderline creepy. And it was funny. Once. But it's overkill. Bring back matricidal Stewie!!!

Ok I guess the show did bring him back in the Stewie Kills Lois episode... but gone are the days when Stewie was the funniest character on Family Guy. During the initial run, he certainly was - Seasons 1 - 3, which on DVD eventually rescued the show from oblivion. But much like Bart Simpson gave way to Homer as the epicenter of the show after a few years, Stewie has been dumbed down and allowed Peter's more zany stupidity to shine through and amuse us.

Yet he remains a t-shirt peddling, calendar moving animated icon. He's on my wall right now, and for once, the page is turned to the correct month - at least for a few more days.

And he is still funny.

Hence the reason for Stewie Griffin - The Untold Story. This DVD is probably a tad too late, and really, the time to release it would have been the second the show returned - but alas, it was delayed, held back, etc., for whatever reason(s).

When it finally did air, it served as a multi-part episode, but here I'm reviewing the DVD, supposedly longer/uncensored. Basically, it's a big long episode, and the first of what seems to be a trend now that the Star Wars spoofs have come to fruition.

Some highlights:

- Quagmire's Cross-Cuntry Tour - nice! Or better yet, Giggity!
- Adam West taking "Maple Syrup" back (I'm keeping that one)
- "Women on Women or anything with an amputee"
- Meg knee'd in the face
- You know what really Grinds My Gears?
- The red carpet premiere of the "movie"

The basic premise of this is simple: Peter gets his own segment on the local news, a flat-out rant that goes something like this: You know what really grinds my gears? You, America. Fuck You.

Well actually that's his final broadcast; prior to that he has some real topics that grind his gears.

And, during the commotion of Peter getting his own news spot, Stewie happens to notice a guy on TV who looks EXACTLY like him - only grown up! Thinking it's his "real" father, Stewie embarks on a mission to hunt the man down - only to find out that the man is, in fact, himself - back in time on a vacation from the future.

Obviously, Stewie's life hasn't turned out the way he has been anticipating - he's not the ruler of the world, and dear mother is not dead - thus he hops a ride back to the future, where Chris has a bitch of a wife, Brian is dead, and Meg has become "Ron" by way of a sex change. No one's all that surprised over the last bit of news...

I'll admit it - this episode is much more amusing when high. It's one of those rare times when something that somewhat disappointed me because much better thanks to being baked. So thank you, Marijuana, for making the purchase of this DVD that much more enjoyable.

I still can't give this one a spectacular review by any stretch of the imagination, as given the hype that led up to it, it really was a let-down - but Family Guy fans should still enjoy it. And the best part of it, in the end, for me, was the clip above, the spoof of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

It should have just been thrown in with the rest of the season in a box set, however. FOX - fuck you and your bleeding the cash cow dry.

Bottom line - this gets a 3/5 due to me being high, otherwise, it would score a 2.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Cube (1997)

2009-08-01T12:10:00.003-04:00

Release Date: 1997
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Starring: Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller, Julian Richings, Wayne Robson, Maurice Dean Wint
Tagline: "Fear... Paranoia... Suspicion... Desperation"
Random Trivia: Every single actor to appear on-screen in the movie is listed above. Natali actually produced a short film depicting what was outside the Cube... then destroyed it, preferring to keep it secret. He had no direct connection to the two sequels.

Ok, a few things I want to point out:

- Without Cube, would we have Saw? Would Saw be the same? Perhaps but there's definitely some striking similarities between the first two Saw movies and the earlier Cube. I'd wager it was definitely influential.

- Natali is a very approachable guy. I actually attended the North American premiere of his second directorial effort, Cypher, a few years back, and he answered every single question the audience had after the show. Sure, that's the point of a film festival appearance/premiere, but not everyone comes through.

- The sequels? Forget them.

- So I was about a third of the way through typing this up when blogger crapped out and didn't save my draft... UGH!

Cube is an interesting little precursor to the Gore Porn genre of Saw, Hostel, etc. An extremely simple concept, way before its time - a handful of people wake up to find themselves trapped in a perfectly square room (a cube) with secured doors, that can be opened, on all sides. Each door leads to another perfectly square room. They need out. They also need to deal with each other.

Lets start with the basics - A jumble of personalities bound to conflict: the street smart cop, the smarter-than-her-years teenage girl (Nicole de Boer, who later appeared on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and The Dead Zone series), the pessimist who knows something, the snooty chick, Wayne Robson as an escape artist, and Julian Richings as an idiot savant (think Rain Man). Both of the latter are soon to be seen in George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead in a reunion of sorts.

You can see where this is going. There are traps in each room sure to lead to certain death. Numbers on the door to each new chamber give clues as to which are safe, and math geek Leaven (De Boer) thinks she has the key. She quickly befriends the much older Kazan (Andrew Miller), which no doubt pisses off snooty Holloway, who cracks wise about him liking younger girls. As the group battles traps and solves mathematical clues to stay alive, they also try not to turn against themselves - which doesn't last long.

That's right, I said certain death...

Tension leads to violence (which I'm told leads to anger, hate, and the dark side) before all is said and done. The most trying aspect for the prisoners is the introduction of idiot savant Alderson (Richings), who holds the key to their escape - but whose condition risks their lives at every turn.

Probably one of the best low-budget horror films of its time, Cube holds up to most of the schlock coming out today, and actually has a decent script and message - not something seen all that often at this point.

I don't want to give too much away, other than to say that characters go through definite shifts as their time trapped within the Cube grows larger.

Oh yes, I may have failed to point that out - each single room adds up to making a giant cube, the origins of which are a mystery to all those inside... maybe...

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

The Wizard of Gore (2007)

2009-07-28T10:00:00.009-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: Jeremy Kasten
Starring: Crispin Glover, Kip Pardue, Bijou Phillips, Brad Dourif, The Suicide Girls
Tagline: "What are you afraid of?"
Random Trivia: The Suicide Girls have an awesome live burlesque show - I've seen it. The Wizard of Gore first appeared in 1970; this is a modernized remake.

This just sort of popped up onto my radar suddenly. No idea what it was, but any movie with Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif, and The Suicide Girls (any number of them) has my attention. Fuck yeah it has my attention.

Disclaimer #1: My apologies for the lame quality screencaps this time out.

Disclaimer #2: I usually hate remakes, but since I know nothing of the original, this is all new to me!

Having no background probably helped on this one - I was thoroughly entertained. Umm plot synopsis? Well, Kip Pardue plays Edmund? Eddie? Ed? A zine/underground newspaper writer/publisher with a nose for the twisted and depraved. Showing up at a fetish event/orgy of sorts one night, he stumbles upon the most completely balls-out, full-tilt, insane mindfuck of a magic show ever: Montag the Magnificent (Glover) slaughters a girl on stage. We're talking entrails ripped clean out, let a bear trap snap shut on her head intense. The audience screams, begins heading for the hills, shit he really killed her - then the lights cut out. And come back. And there's Montag, with the girl, alive and well standing next to him.

Bravo.

Except when the girl shows up dead a few days later. Something that happens again. And again. And again.

Edmund begins following the case, obsessing over the incredible act, and the girls who continually wind up dead - to the point of tailing them. And quickly losing his sanity.

Ok I'm baked to the point that I don't remember much more, beyond vague images/bits and pieces here and there. Except to say that this movie fucking rocked while high, and is on my re-watch pile. Honestly I've seen the Suicide Girls live show which is cool, Crispin Glover rocks, as does Brad Dourif (barely recognizable in a role that isn't a doll or a sniveling worm).

FYI, the tits in this movie are chick-approved - I was asked to include this by my movie watching, baked out of her mind companion.

I'd score this higher but I honestly don't remember half of it...

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Babylon A.D. (2008)

2009-07-27T10:44:00.009-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Starring: Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Gérard Depardieu, Mélanie Thierry
Tagline: "Mankind already has a protector."
Random Trivia: In traditional FOX fashion, the director and studio feuded throughout the production of scenes, script, and run time, hacking off over an hour of the film in the final cut. Due to the feud the movie was given almost no promotion. There wasn't much of a tagline for the Western release of the movie; the one you see a few lines up is translated from the Spanish release.

Poor Vin Diesel. The guy was just born at the wrong time. Had he broken out in the 80s, he would have had a string of massive hits by now. Instead, he's got Pitch Black, the oft-forgotten Boiler Room, and... The Fast and the Furious. Which I personally hated, but it raked in cash at the box office, as did part four recently.

Vin actually seems to care about making movies though. Sure, he's another action star clone, but he dropped out of Hitman to make Babylon A.D. - only to see it raped by the studio. He was passionate about the Riddick character, and is still pushing for another chance at that one. He has tried for ages to get the story of Hannibal the Conqueror made, and he was in Saving Private Ryan, for fuck's sake!

What I'm getting at here is, Babylon A.D. is a massive failure, but that's not Vin Diesel's fault. It's not really any of the actor's fault. It's basically FOX being FOX, raping the movie, hacking scenes, trying to get in an American friendly run-time, and on top of that, a script that could have been much tighter. Given this was based on a novel, Babylon Babies, how hard could that have been? Don't answer that...

Diesel plays Toorop, a mercenary charged with transporting a girl, Aurora (Mélanie Thierry) and her keeper (Michelle Yeoh as a member of a sect of nuns) from Russia to America somewhere in the not-to-distant future. But distant enough to have cool effects scenes, when affordable. Just not so distant that FOX would have to break the bank, you know.

See? Isn't that cool? It's New York City! See we took some actual skyline shots and then edited in some cool looking buildings and lights...

Gorsky (an unrecognizable Gérard Depardieu) is the mobster who hires him. Along the way, various parties - the girl's father, and the sect of nuns to which Yeoh's Sister Rebeka belongs, intervene.

Think Transporter, in the future. The first one. And there's actual chemistry between Diesel and Thierry! Michelle Yeoh isn't half bad either. But the plot is just too damn tired... see, Aurora is carrying a virus, supposedly. Oh, and she happens to have been created to fulfill the prophecy of the religious sect who raised her, so that she can give birth via immaculate conception and make the religion legitimate - through a complete, genetically engineered hoax.

Great. Cloning. So that hasn't been done to death.

I was high enough to enjoy Diesel and Thierry on screen. And I'm curious about the one hour or more of footage which FOX hacked out. Sadly, though, we'll never know if this could have been any good since they reportedly interfered as the movie was shooting and changed actual scenes! For fuck's sake FOX, STOP. You raped X-Men into the grave. You shit out the Wolverine spin-off! You've completely tarnished both the Alien and Predator franchises in not one but two complete suck-fests, and now you've decided to begin bastardizing stand-alone films as well...

Overall rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5)

Mutant Chronicles (2008)

2009-07-26T11:03:00.015-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: Simon Hunter
Starring: Thomas Jane, Ron Pearlman, John Malkovich, Devon Aoki, Anna Walton
Tagline: "The darkest age is yet to come. Have faith."
Random Trivia: Devon Aoki was in D.E.B.S., which I've played a drinking game to. Thomas Jane was in the recently reviewed (on this site) The Mist. The movie is based on a role-playing game.

Well then. I had no idea what Mutant Chronicles was going into it. I don't even remember this playing in theatres. But as I'm apt to do, I threw it on last night while blazing and discovered something... I still have no idea what Mutant Chronicles is. A futuristic war movie? Kinda. A knock-off of Lord of the Rings with a lesser budget? Somewhat. A comic book movie? Well yes except it's based on a game, or so I've read. Over-the-top action? Yeah...

Basic plot: Way off in the distant future, mankind is run entirely by corporations. These divide the world into four segments, each controlled by a competing entity. They serve, basically, as governments, and reminded me a fair bit of Orwell's 1984. The corporations are at war, a war which uncovers an ancient lair, and within it, an ancient machine, sent from another galaxy, which turns humans into blood-thirsty mutants. This machine has been covered up for centuries, only to be re-opened by the fighting. And so mankind finds itself at the mercy of the mutant hordes...

But meanwhile, back in Gotham... erm... where ever - Thomas Jane is Mitch Hunter, a soldier whose best friend winds up taken by the mutants before anyone even knows what they are. His job, he likes to say, is to "fuck shit up" - and he's soon recruited by Ron Pearlman's Brother Samuel, a monk of sorts who holds the key to stopping the machine - an ancient bomb which came from the machine itself, and an ancient holy book that describes its location and inner workings.

The plot, at this point, jumps from a gritty future war with World War I era-style uniforms and antique-looking but powerful weapons, and becomes a noble quest to stop the machine for the good of mankind. It suffers from a case of ADD, and some serious mis-casting. Ron Pearlman is awesome most of the time - but a good monk he does not make. Ol' Ron should have been in a soldier's uniform for this one. Thomas Jane fares better - he really does have leading man chops but the script and lack of focus really let him down on this one.

And the rest of the characters - we hardly knew ye! Devon Aoki - you might remember her from Sin City - plays the usual tough hot chick, except this time out there's two tough hot chicks, so add in the nun-like Severian (Anna Walton), since the movie seems to think that bigger is better. On top of that you get the snooty brit who happens to be a badass, the slick asian guy who happens to be a badass, the hispanic dude who happens to be a badass... you can see where this is going.

The group travels down into the catacombs to the lost city - which looks a lot like a deserted, decayed modern day city - and heads into the machine, battling mutants all along the way.

A nitpick here: All the mutants look pretty much the same. Big ugly vampire types - pale skin, sharp teeth - with skewers for arms.

Some variety would have been nice.

The melding of technology and mythology is interesting at times, but that's about as much credit as I can really give Mutant Chronicles. If bored on a rainy day, give it a go. Just don't expect any miracles.

Oh - one of my baked observations - John fucking Malkovich is in this. Why the fuck hasn't he been in more lately? Someone give the guy a Hannibal Lecter style role, please. He's amazing. At least he's in the upcoming Jonah Hex movie.

Overall rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5)

Diary of the Dead (2007)

2009-07-26T04:11:00.015-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: George A. Romero
Starring: Michelle Morgan, Joshua Close, Shawn Roberts, Amy Ciupak Lalonde
Tagline: "Shoot the dead."
Random Trivia: In the hospital scene, the voice from the radio telling people to aim for the head is Tom Savini; the audio was actually recorded during the Dawn of the Dead remake. Stephen King, Wes Craven, Quentin Tarantino, Simon Pegg, and Guillermo del Toro all do voice overs as newsreaders in the movie.

Diary of the Dead. Ok. A little secret - I'm not the huge Zombie fan HalfBaked is. I remember watching Night of the Living Dead as a kid. Looking back, it's not all that scary, but it's an important film. It was a horror movie with a message. I'm not sure I really got that at the time though. To me, it was slow moving corpses lurching after some idiots in a house. I was in it just for the chills.

For Romero, the classic Dawn of the Dead, and lesser Day of the Dead, followed. And then Romero left the zombie arena for a while - until Land of the Dead was announced.

Now, all that said - zombie movies began to grow on me at some point. I loved the Dawn of the Dead remake, for all its flaws. I loved Shaun of the Dead - sure it's half spoof but it's still awesome.

And I was pumped for Land of the Dead. Too much so. I was let down by it. John Leguizamo and Dennis Hopper... a big budget... it's almost like Romero had too much going for him. The movie felt Hollywood, slick, the Dead Reckoning vehicle was lame, and even Asia Argento couldn't save the movie.

Diary of the Dead is what Land of the Dead should have been.

It's by no means a perfect movie. I actually started to get worried, at the outset, that this was going to be Blair Witch with zombies. Thankfully, it's not. The cast is as wooden as half the animated corpses stumbling around, but then in Romero movies that's usually the case. Still, the movie's messages shine through - and there's a bunch of themes this time out. Our reliance on the media. The power of new media. The importance of truth. Immigration, discrimination. Even a little tidbit on guns and gun violence. And whether or not, as a species, we're even worth saving.

So despite a weak start, Diary of the Dead finishes strong. And seriously, once you hit the second half, the payoffs start to roll right in: a zombie clown. A badass Amish dude. A zombie doctor and nurse. Society cannibalizing itself (not literally, the zombies do that). The kindness of strangers. Zombies trapped in a swimming pool. Awesome killshots. Stupid decisions by stupid people.

I'm really just rambling here, essentially, but a lot of images pretty much jumped from the screen during the second half of the movie. Some serious standout moments - but maybe I should backtrack, and explain the damn plot and concept.

Diary of the Dead is not a continuation of Night, Dawn, Day, and Land of the Dead. Instead, it's a reboot. Or an alternate reality. Or, the same day as Night of the Living Dead, but updated into modern times. It really doesn't matter - either way, it's the zombie apocalypse, starting now. A group of film students happen to be caught in the midst, and their director, Jason (Joshua Close) takes it upon himself to document what's happening. Along with him is the pissed off ex, the professor, the airhead, the silent broody guy - all the usual types.

Finding their campus - or at least their dorm - deserted save a looter, they head out on the road, looking to get to their respective homes, by way of an RV. Along the way, well... that's the fun in the movie. Passing through the chaos, trying to stay alive, and looking at the reaction of different survivors.

And encountering plenty of the undead.

Jason, for one, can't get over the importance of documenting everything. And here's where some of Romero's message comes into play - the power of new media over old. How one person, spreading the truth, can change things.

Yet at the same time, he seems to highlight the hazards of becoming too overzealous. Jason has trouble accepting the reality of what he's seeing - as if, because he's filming it, it's not real (he actually yells CUT at one point during a zombie attack).

Shot over 23 days in Canada with a mostly Canadian, mostly unknown cast - Diary of the Dead makes up for a lot of the letdown that was Land of the Dead, and makes me very, very excited for the premiere of Survival of the Dead, which will be unveiled in September at the Toronto International Film Festival. More importantly, it tells me that Romero still has it - he just needs the right motivation. Like a lot of filmmakers, I think that in giving Romero too much to work with, he gets lazy. Or maybe it's just the system itself.

Whatever the case, Diary is worth watching. Ignore the first person perspective stuff. It's handled quite well, set up to allow multiple camera angles, and doesn't come off at all like Blair Witch, or Cloverfield, or any other POV style movie. It's zombies from a personal level.

But some things never change - shoot 'em in the head.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Rise (2007)

2009-07-25T04:36:00.008-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: Sebastian Gutierrez
Starring: Lucy Liu, James D'Arcy, Michael Chiklis,
Tagline: "They didn't leave her alive. They left her UNDEAD."
Random Trivia: Director Gutierrez also wrote the script. Each time Liu's character wakes up in a confined space, she hits her head on something.

Well, I think Rise pretty much killed my streak of entertaining horror movies. Honestly, what was Lucy Liu thinking as the filming of this movie unfolded? She's done some crap before, for reference, see Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. She's done low budget indies - take Cypher, a Canadian production I actually saw at the Toronto International Film festival for its North American Premiere.

But was this a paycheck? A vain attempt at securing a "lead" role? What the hell was she thinking having read this script?

When the evil old man tells Liu's Sadie Blake that "you did good" near the start of the movie, I cringed. I'm not a grammar Nazi. And something along the lines of "You've served us well" would sound b-movie cheese-ish - but this is a B movie! Or it should be!

Rise suffers from taking itself too seriously whilst having a week script backing it up. There's no decent twists, the outcome is predictable, the acting wooden, and Lucy Liu has gone from being the hot young Asian piece to the old Chinese lady. Well, middle-aged, but it's just around the corner.

Even the attempt to do the "vampires are sexy evil hot" thing fails.

I can't really believe I made it through this. I guess we want plot, well - Sadie Blake is a journalist doing a story on vampire clubs/cults whatever. She passes them off as a bunch of teenage Lestats dressing up - until she hits upon a real one. Soon she finds herself amongst the members of the undead after being fed upon by Bishop (James D'Arcy) and his mate - the latter of whom, taken by Blake's refusal to die, decides to turn her.

Sadie then swears to get revenge on those who killed her, and at some point, The Shield's Michael Chiklis turns up as a cop seeking revenge for the murder of his daughter - another victim of the vampire underground. Sadie fights her own nature, the audience fights boredom.

IMDB tells me the word vampire was never spoken during the film; I wasn't really counting. They pull off the vampire's don't reflect gag, and some cool feeding scenes, but honestly, this puppy could not hold my attention. The ending was so anti-climactic that I found myself shocked it was over that easily - but it really was a sigh of relief.

Overall rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5)

The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

2009-07-24T13:29:00.009-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: Ryûhei Kitamura
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Brooke Shields, Leslie Bibb, Vinnie Jones, Ted Raimi
Tagline: "The most terrifying ride you'll ever take."
Random Trivia: Based on the short story by Clive Barker. LionsGate buried the opening of this movie - perhaps not knowing how to promote it - by releasing it in $1 cinemas, crashing revenue. Clive Barker himself actually started a viral marketing campaign in protest.

The Midnight Meat Train. With a title that awesome, you've either got gonzo porn, or bloody horror on your hands. Since there's a lack of impressionable young girls looking for daddy's approval in the film, this one falls into the latter category.

Let me clear up any confusion that random trivia might have caused - this movie is actually pretty fucking awesome. Sure, Vinnie Jones really only has one mode and his only good film (discounting this) was Snatch - but he barely speaks throughout the entire movie. Yes, the rest of the cast outside of Brooke Shields is lame through horrid, and even Shields isn't much to write home about - but it's a horror flick! The concept, execution, and result are pretty fucking unique, and I think I'm actually on a roll with some decent horror flicks lately.

This actually managed to keep me awake, at 5AM, while hitting the leafy stuff, so that says something. Unfortunately, due to the hour and level of bakedness, my notes are of absolutely no fucking use to me here, and I was far too out of it to write the review whilst watching the movie.

Seriously, my dotor's handwriting is clearer than this.

Plot. Yeah lets start there. Bradley Cooper stars as Leon Kauffman, a New York City photographer looking for his big break. The girl of his dreams is his girlfriend, Leslie Bibb's Maya Jones, who brings us such pearls of wisdom as "you know how they talk about the good old days? There never was a good old days." Happy thought, bitch! (My quote may be a tad off).

Leon, meanwhile, decides to start photographing New York at night, hoping to get a spot in Susan Hoff's (Brooke Shields) art show - although it would appear screwing her would get the job done much quicker. Alas, our Leon only has eyes for Maya, and he soon finds himself shooting the horrors of New York - including a subway mugging where he ingeniously rescues the girl by pointing out a security camera to the thugs.

Because you know what a great deterrent those cameras really are.

So Leon is a hero - not that anyone other than slutty hot chick knows it - and has some great photos to boot. One problem - the girl in question never makes it home. When her photo shows up in the paper the next day (really? missing girls show up that quick?), Leon realizes he might have been the last person to see her alive, getting on a subway car - and takes the photos to the cops. Who immediately suspect him.

Soon Leon is obsessed with finding out what happened to the girl, and begins snooping about subway stations, finding Mahogany (Vinnie Jones) - a creepy butcher who wears a fine suit to lurk in the subways at night.

Am I giving away too much when I tell you that Mahogany is basically butchering humans on the late train? Probably not. The slaughter is brutal and brilliant, however, plenty of splatter, vicious (ouch! crotch shot!), and the butcher idea adds in quirks like the removal of teeth, nails and hair... I wound up wondering if this was based on Robert Pickton for a bit then realized it's an old Clive Barker tale.

A sample of my notes follows:

Shop. Two. WTF? Ugly kitchen.

Well, the two reference I understand. The only other comprehensible comment from me at this point is that bone racks like Leslie Bibb are not hot - but at least the sex was a little rough. Screw the sweaty romantic sex scenes; this one's a little more like A History of Violence then the lame shit we usually see in movies.

Ok back on topic - where the film falters a little is in the payoff. What we've had up til this point is a creepy serial killer horror film. Mahogany is a mute Hannibal Lecter on steroids (no, I'm not comparing Vinnie Jones to Anthony Hopkins). Then suddenly - we get this fantasy horror angle that feels somewhat out of place. I haven't read the story but I'm guessing it was there as well, knowing Barker. And it's not horrible - it just doesn't live up to the first parts of the film. The concept itself is enough - a guy butchers you on the last train of the night; you vanish forever without a trace, teeth and hair and eyes and fingernails removed, meat used for God knows what - we didn't need a supernatural angle, really.

But it's there, and I won't bitch too much. Even with it, this is a solid little flick with some bad acting but buckets of blood and a unique concept. It's obvious that Lions Gate didn't want to touch it, probably because of the title and a lack of marketing ideas - or some suit simply thought it was too nasty.

Fuck 'em. Never trust a guy in a suit. Especially when he carries a meat tenderizer.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

The Mist (2007)

2009-07-20T17:14:00.030-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: Frank Darabount
Starring: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, William Sadler, Jeffrey DeMunn, Andre Braugher
Tagline: "Fear Changes Everything."
Random Trivia: This is Darabount's third King adaptation, but the first actual horror. The other two were The Green Mile, and The Shawshank Redemption. Both William Sadler and Jeffrey DeMunn appeared in all three. The painting David (Thosmas Jane) is working on at the beginning of the movie shows Roland, the last Gunslinger, with the Dark Tower looming in the distance. The rights to the Dark Tower series are currently held by J.J. Abrams.

Do not go into The Mist.

Really, the concept isn't that far off from 1408 - you didn't want to go into that either. Although maybe, actually, this is 1408 in reverse. Consider the idea that the evil fucking room in that tale was filled with poison gas, or at least, that's what it was like - but stay out of that room and you're fine (or so says Samuel L. Jackson). Now consider that the whole world is covered in poison gas - or at least an evil fucking mist with... things... in it. Whatever you do, STAY in the room you are in. Do NOT go into the mist.

And here you have the concept for one of Stephen King's classic short stories - bordering on novella length, really.

Frank Darabount spent a long time trying to get this movie made, and if you can't tell by The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, he's very passionate about King's writing. I mean really, those are two of the best King movies, and the Shawshank Redemption has aged better than any movie I can think of and is probably on a lot of favorite lists.

Now, those two films were straight drama. The Mist, obviously, is at its roots a horror story. Yet while horror is the backdrop, the message is again what's important. This is a movie not about horror per se, or monsters, but about how we react to catastrophe, and what good, if any, faith does in such times - faith in yourself, faith in others, faith in a higher power - oh, and then there's this little bit about religion and mass hysteria.

This is the second part of my Stephen King double bill. I'm a little less baked and need a few hits to even things out.

We open with David Drayton (Thomas Jane), his wife, and son - weathering a storm at their house by the lake. The storm itself is not important. The aftermath is. We find his boathouse smashed by a neighbor's tree - Brent Norton, played here by Andre Braugher, a bigshot lawyer who Drayton's already crossed swords with once. We find his work - a commissioned movie poster; Mr. Drayton is an artist, you see - ruined. And we find an eerie mist rolling across the lake, coming down from the mountains. This is an excellent little start to the movie, or so says my hastily scratched notes.

Now, this movie is, after all, entitled The Mist. So we know that's a big to-do. Drayton and family does not, and so he sets out to town for supplies, taking his son, his neighbor Mr. Norton, with whom things are currently - but not completely - patched over, and leaving behind his wife.

In retrospect, not a great move.

Ok, before we go on - Tom Jane. Excellent actor. This is his second outing in a Stephen King flick, and the much, much better of the two. The other one - the cinematic abortion that was Dreamcatcher. We won't even get into that. But Jane is a guy who really, really should be getting some better roles, and for whatever reason - dumb luck, bad casting, etc. - it hasn't quite worked out. He made a fucking awesome Punisher, only to be dragged down by Travolta hamming it up. He was in Deep Blue Sea, which has a special place in my heart because I love cheese horror with sharks in them... maybe Hung will work out for him. Lets hope, but the guy should be in movies, not just an HBO series.

Now. Back to The Mist. The Mist is a disaster movie. It's about being locked in while the world around you is under attack. Where things want to get inside and eat you.

By the time Drayton hits the supermarket, we get an idea of what's going on. There's army guys everywhere, after all. Inside, there's all sorts of commotion, and we're introduced to bible thumping, holier-than-thou Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), who will serve as the movies antagonist when creepy monsters aren't around. And then... in rolls the mist. Preceded by Jeffrey DeMunn's Dan, an otherwise normal guy who runs in screaming about something... in the mist. Within moments, the doors are shut, the mist has enveloped the supermarket... and the sides have begun to form.

See, in any given survival situation with more than a few people, the natural order of things will not simply fall into place. There will be a struggle for power, and, if a group is big enough - even, say, 30 or 40 people - a divide in thinking which may not be fixable is likely to occur. Meaning you will wind up with two, or more, groups with opposing ideas, and a serious problem in getting people to work towards a common goal.

It sounds like a fucking pep talk, but it's true.

Inside the shop we see it first hand. It starts with the bag boy, Norm. The generator breaks. David thinks he hears something outside, but a couple of macho locals, and Norm, the bag boy, dismiss this, and decide they're man enough to deal with whatever is going down. The locals raise the loading doors, Norm ventures out... and is taken. Grabbed, by nasty looking tentacles that rip chunks out of him until they drag his bleeding carcass off to whatever waits to feed at the end of them.

It's macho stupidity, but it earns David Drayton a few followers. Ollie, one of the employees. The macho locals, at least for a while. A couple of local teachers (one played by Laurie Holden, who in another movie might have been Jane's love interest). On the other hand, his neighbor, Brent Norton, having not seen it, refuses to believe the story - and here we start to see the divide. Those who believe there's something in the mist, with David. Those who do not, with Brent (who thinks everyone is playing a joke on him). And those who believe whatever is happening is due to a lack of grovelling before God, with Mrs. Carmody.

Carmody is a whackjob, but a dangerous one. If you've been around small towns, you might know someone like her. In years gone by you'd probably find more of her type - a lack of education, a high amount of self-righteousness, and blind faith in religion. The kind that would yell "string 'em up" if the timing was just right, or who might stir up enough bad blood to send out a lynch mob. All whilst shouting about an eye for an eye, smacking a hand on the good book.

That's essentially what happens within the store. Brent's people leave, and we can assume they meet a bad end. Drayton's stay, as does Carmody's. But each day, and each encounter with yet another otherworldly creature, brings more people to her side, and her preachings become more and more old testament. The Lord, he wants your blood, Amen.

By the time Drayton takes his son and his remaining followers with him out the door, headed for his pickup, she's already goaded them to one blood sacrifice - the killing of a local soldier. The boy was to be next.

I can't tell you about the best part of this film. I absolutely, 100% cannot spoil the ending. It is, without question, the biggest FUCK YOU HOLLYWOOD ending I have seen in years, if not ever. See as much as I like social commentary going on here - the movie isn't all that scary. The CGI monsters are hit and miss. The tentacle scene is cool, and there's a flying dragon-like creature that looks decent, but some of the other bugs - most of the evil fiends roaming in the mist, at least the smaller ones, look like bugs - are pretty cheese. There's a few giant creatures we never get a clear shot of, and the scope and scale of them is impressive, but what we do see - we see too much of. The typical horror fault. Reveal too much, and it stops being scary, because we can get our eyes, and our minds, around it. We adapt to it. The scariest thing out there is the unknown - Darabount could have used a reminder of this.

But the ending... the ending takes this movie from a 3/5 or 3.5/5, strong social commentary but not overly creepy movie, to a HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT stage. In the end, it's still getting a 4/5 - it's by no means perfect - but damn. Bravo on that ending, Frank!

One last cap - the artwork mentioned in the random trivia.

Overall rating: 3/4 Baked (4 out of 5)

1408 (2007)

2009-07-18T04:31:00.018-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: Mikael Håfström
Starring: John Cusak, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary McCormack
Tagline: "No one lasts more than an hour."
Random Trivia: Based on the short story by Stephen King, which was actually started as an example excerpt in his book On Writing. Fans were intrigued by the little tale he started to outline how to flesh out an idea, and urged him to complete the tale. The finished product eventually appeared as part of an audiobook collection, and later in the collection Everything's Eventual.

So a little while back - my notes don't have dates but sometime around the end of June - I sparked up a little something and did a Stephen King double bill, consisting of 1408 and The Mist. I'll be reviewing each separately, in the order I watched them, but in all honesty, regardless of order, these two films make a cool little double feature if you want to be creeped out.

1408 goes further into the creeps and scares realm - and marks one of the few decent big-screen horror adaptations of King's work. The others would, perhaps, be Carrie, The Shining, and Misery (if you want to call the latter horror and not a thriller).

In general, the best King movies are the non-horror: Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile. So it's nice to see a few decent titles come along based on his traditional scary stories.

On to my notes:

- John Cusak in a horror flick - awesome!
- It's PG-13. And amazingly, it's better than most R-rated horrors in the past few years.
- It's just an evil fucking room.

The basic plot - Mike Enslin (Cusak) writes about haunted houses, motels, and other locations - but doesn't believe in them. He's about the get a fucking wake-up call (Stephen King, to my knowledge, doesn't visit them - but he sure writes about them!).

Enslin gets this little tip at the beginning - a postcard from the Dolphin Hotel that says "Don't go in room 1408" - the numbers of which add up to 13. And, being there's no 13th floor in hotels or most office buildings, 1408 is technically located on the 13th floor.

A more interesting angle, however, is this - who sent the post card? It's never explained, but I like to think that the room sent it. That's right. The room itself. Having slept too many years under the watchful eye of Samuel L. Jackson's Gerald Olin, it's hungry again... that's just my little theory.

Olin, of course, does NOT want Enslin going into that room. It has a history, a nasty one. Suicides, murders, and natural deaths go into the dozens. Mutilation and disease result should one venture in too long. Think of it, Olin says, like a room full of poison gas. You could hold your breath for a little while, and a minor moment or two of exposure might not kill you. But stay too long, or make too many visits... No, it's just not a good idea to go in that room. But thanks to some legal technicalities, a hotel apparently has to rent you any room you request so long as it's vacant. Is this true? I have no idea.

In any case, when it comes to Enslin, Olin points out, the Dolphin Hotel doesn't need the publicity - and he doesn't want to clean up the mess. How valiant.

The second Enslin ultimately does set foot in the room, however, the tone is set. And the second the clock radio flicks on and begins to blast an oldie - singing "we've only just begun..." - the countdown is on. Literally - shortly thereafter, a sixty minute timer begins the march on down to impending doom.

As the count goes on (a theme that comes back later in the movie - no one ever lasts more than an hour in 1408, according to Olin, and there's a good reason), Enslin winds up more and more paranoid, more and more fucked up, more and more frightened; his only companion his personal tape recorder where he takes notes. A handy device for a movie such as this, but it actually did feature in the original story.

You have to wonder - did the room take this long to burrow into his mind?

There's some added back story in the movie about a dead daughter for Enslin and his wife (McCormack) - it pays off pretty well, although there's also a bit about his dad that's a bit tired. Still, this is a movie based on a short story that really only has two main characters, so it's understandable that the script needed some fleshing out.

Perhaps it's time to check out?

Final thoughts: for a PG-13 horror, 1408 gives you more scares per minute than most of its R-rated cousins. It's creepy, old fashioned horror. The atmosphere really sells it - 1408 is an evil fucking room. The end will give you chills if you're not completely desensitized to, well, everything. And Cusak and Jackson seem to be enjoying themselves. Come on... go inside...

Overall rating: 3/4 Baked (4 out of 5)

Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)

2009-07-16T01:58:00.022-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: Kevin Smith
Starring: Seth Rogan, Jason Mewes, Elizabeth Banks, Traci Lords, Jeff Anderson
Tagline: "What would you do to get out of debt?"
Random Trivia: The original one sheet/poster hit censorship issues in the US, so a stick-figure poster was released. No such problems were encountered in Canada - except in Toronto subway stations, where the original poster was slightly altered to make it less explicit.

Has this blog really been going several months without a Kevin Smith movie review? WTF? Nothing about Jay and Silent Bob??? We're just not living up to our name, damn it!

Ok so here I am to the rescue, thanks to Half Baked stopping by the other day and me winding up in a review-like state of mind.

When you really look at it, this is Kevin Smith's first real non-Askewniverse film (meaning View Askew films compromising the loosely-related Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, and Clerks II). Oh, sure, there was Jersey Girl, but Smith got the shaft on that by casting pal Ben Affleck only to have the Bennifer thing blow up in his face when Gigli (which Smith had nothing to do with) bombed worse than Ishtar (well, maybe not quite that bad.). Unfortunately, half the world thought Jersey Girl *was* Gigli, and just about no one went to see it.

Then Smith decided to write this little script about two friends shooting porn to get out of debt, with the lead specifically written for Seth Rogan. Rogan at that point was breaking out, and lets face it - for the past year and a half to two years, he's been in fucking everything. I fully expect him to show up as one of the new generation Ghostbusters in the near future.

Rogen said yes, and the result is Zack and Miri Make a Porno... which could almost be an Askewniverse film. It's definitely funny enough, has Jeff Anderson as a goalie/camera man (he was Randall in Clerks I/II, where he also played goal), and is completely fucked.

Exhibit A: Brandon Routh and Justin Long as gay lovers/porn stars who show up at Zack and Miri's high school reunion. Zack actually takes a shine to Long, and the entire sequence of Elizabeth Bank's Miri hitting on Routh is perfectly done.

Examble B: Everything else.

I should probably go into some plot here. Zack and Miri were high school pals. Zack and Miri never went anywhere. Now they're platonic roommates who can barely make ends meet. By the time their high school reunion rolls around, they're behind on rent and their heat is about to be shut off. Looking to cash in quick, Zack comes up with a plan - produce and star in a porno flick, sell it to people they went to school with, and pay off those bills.

It's an idea that really could only exist in a Kevin Smith film. I mean really, if you're going to make porn - sell it on the net. There's plenty of buyers after all.

But Zack and Miri stick to the small time, while somehow hiring a couple of hot chicks near - forgive the pun - pro-bono to take some shaft, and Lester the Molester (Jason Mewes) as the male "talent" to go along with Zack.

The cast and crew decide to try a spoof called Star Whores, but when their "sound stage" is destroyed by a wrecking crew, a more basic concept comes to life: film the movie at Zack's place of employment, a coffee shop.

There's plenty of funny sex shoot scenes, a fair amount of nakedness, but believe it or not, the film actually has heart, and what it really turns out to be is a raunchy love story between two best friends - who realize, during the execution of their cunning porn plan, that they're really more than friends.

The casting is solid - including underage porn legend Traci Lords, Jason Mewes - who is just hilarious in one of his few non-Jay-like roles (ok there's still a bit of him in there), and The Office's Craig Robinson as Zack's co-worker/porn financier ("I just wanted to see from free titties"...).

This was easily one of the best comedies of 2008... so I'll end it with - just go watch it. As long as you're not the easily offended type. Because while it has heart - it still has a constipation problem solved by on-camera anal sex.

Overall rating: 3/4 Baked (4 out of 5)

Coming Soon EXCLUSIVE review!

2009-07-05T00:01:00.009-04:00

Hey guys,

Halfbaked here with a quick report.

I am finally gonna get some stuff done for the site, and first up is something I'm sure most of the internet is clamoring for.....

Yes - that is a trailer for Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus...(I had to make the width of the video 420 in order for it to fit - at least on my screen - lol)

I recently aquired a copy of this so called - movie... and am currently waiting for some smoke to watch it., and shall be posting a review probably around thursday (some things have come up)

Anyway - Full review/Make fun of should be up by Thursday, so be on the lookout for the Fully Baked Review Exclusive look at - Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus.

**Exclusive in meaning that I haven't seen many other reviews almost at all... so :-P

Also on the way - Ghostbusters Trilogy will get a review (I say trilogy because I beat the new game, which plays like a 3rd movie), Prototype will most likely get a review (I just borrowed it from a bud)...

I haven't thought of much else, but stuff is in the works!

- Halfbaked

The Gate (1987)

2009-06-28T20:45:00.015-04:00

Release Date: 1987
Director: Tibor Takács
Starring: Stephen Dorff, Christa Denton, Louis Tripp, Kelly Rowan, Jennifer Irwin
Tagline: "... pray it's not too late!"
Random Trivia: Director Takács is a Hungarian who got his start in Canadian television. He's done plenty of B-Movies since, but The Gate remains a classic. Stephen Dorff is young enough to be unreconizable now; this was his first film role.

Winding down the B-movie marathon, we have a classic: The Gate.

The Gate creeped me out as a kid, although looking back, it's pretty laughable, what with the CGI ghoulies and cheese effects. Still, this is the movie that made me want to dig a huge hole in my back yard to see what I could find. It's the movie that made parents yet again freak out about satanic messages on heavy metal records - which might actually open the gates to hell!!! Muhahahaha!

Wow this shit was fun back then. It's still pretty fun, but lets be honest, it hasn't held up the way some of its comtempories have.

You might know the story here, and if you don't, it's pretty self-explanatory: a bunch of kids led by Stephen Dorff open the gates to hell via a hole in his backyard. Well, technically, some idiot teenager does most of the damage - aren't the older kids always fucking things up for the tykes? This is the Stand By Me effect I think.

The entire thing is conveniently explained by the liner notes of a heavy metal record, and soon these tiny little stop-motion demons are chasing them. That's somewhat like being scared that Gonzo is going to go all muppet-badass and kill you, but hey, it's the 80s - stop motion/claymation monsters were scary, damn it!

The kids wind up on the run while their parents are away, of course, and at first the older crowd doesn't believe what's happening. Worse, they refuse to call the old farts for help. Please remember, this is before 12 year olds carried glocks...

Oh yea - and there's the classic freaky eyeball in a hand scene!

I adore this flick, no matter how dated, but I'll get to that in a sec. Basically, this movie is fun under any condition, and since it's not a hard R horror, it's a good way to introduce your little bro/sis/cousin to scary movies if you're stuck minding the brats.

I'm going to finish up by saying something that would likely piss a few people off: I love the Gate, have nothing but fond memories of it, but this is one of those rare films begging for a remake. It has no particular star. It's not dear enough to rape anyone's childhood - but it's a cool concept that could definitely be updated and become a little darker (note: after a little digging, it seems a remake is being mulled - by Alex Winter of Bill and Ted fame?!?).

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Mother of Tears (2007)

2009-06-28T14:23:00.000-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: Dario Argento
Starring: Asia Argento, Cristian Solimeno, Adam James, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, Jun Ichikawa, Moran Atias
Tagline: "What you see does not exist. What you cannot see is truth."
Random Trivia: Mother of Tears bears the subtitle "The Third Mother" and is the third film of a trilogy. Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980) are the other two.

I'm not sure whether or not this really belongs amidst some of the B-Movie cheese examined over the past while. Dario Argento is a horror legend, although a lot of westerners may not know him all that well, and Asia Argento has been rising up as a scream queen following in her father's footsteps (less-than-hardcore horror fans may know her from Land of the Dead).

However, I do take issue with any film series that waits years and years for the final installment. The look and feel just isn't going to be the same. Technology has moved on. You saw it with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I'm a huge apologist for that movie - I actually enjoyed most of it - but the scenes that dragged it down all involved more modern film techniques (with the worst offender being the obvious - CGI).

Having said that - Mother of Tears handles it well. The effects stick to practical, prop and make-up based for the most part. Not that it matters too much - I'm pretty sure I haven't seen Susperia, and I think I saw bits of Inferno at some point during a late night airing - but I don't even remember it. The first two films are familiar enough by reputation alone, however, so I actually had pretty high hopes for this one.

Gore and brutality wise, it doesn't disappoint. This is a gory movie, but unlike the recently reviewed festival darling End of the Line, it doesn't feel like someone is trying to force you to be shocked.

My baked notes are not helping a lot, and I did start passing out partway through. So this is going to be another one of those Fully Baked Reviews where we peter out towards the end. Heh. Peter.

Asia Argento is the hot factor that brought me to this, but she looks rather bland in it. Damn.

The witches at times just remind me of bitchy, trashy party girls but I think that was partially the intent.

Back to gore - one really cool scene has a girl being slaughtered - disemboweled - and having her intestines wrapped around her throat, choking her. This kind of creativeness goes a long way since, after all, horror movies are really all about the kills.

Stupid monkey. I don't know why that's even in my notes. I'm assuming there was a monkey.

Never read a strange language out loud! It always unleashes something!

There's some kind of plot about how Sarah Mandy's (Argento) mom died defeating the Mother of Sighs, and now the witch known as the Mother of Tears (Moran Atias) has come for the daughter. Or something. After she's released unto the world, all sorts of horrid things happen - rape, murder, Shia LeBeouf... (no, he's not in this!).

Ok here's my final roundup on Mother of Tears - it kept my interest enough, baked, until I passed out, to want to go back and watch it again, and this time make my way all the way through.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

My Name Is Bruce (2007)

2009-06-23T12:30:00.015-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: Bruce Campbell
Starring: Bruce Campbell, Grace Thorsen, Taylor Sharpe, Ted Raimi
Tagline: "Kick Some Ash."
Random Trivia: Campbell has been in all three Spider-Man movies, appeared on The X-Files, and built a back lot set on his own property where all the exterior shots in the movie took place. Yup, that's random!

No B-movie review-a-thon could ever be complete without the inclusion of a Bruce Campbell title, and to be honest, it was this, or The Man with the Screaming Brain.

Campbell directed this title and shot portions of it (see the random trivia) on his own property. It saw a limited theatrical run as he toured around the United States showing it, and aside from that, is pretty much your standard direct to DVD, Video on Demand sort of title. This is not Evil Dead I/II, Army of Darkness or Bubba Ho-Tep, this is absolute B-movie Bruce.

Before we go too much further - time out for the obligatory Bruce Campbell love-in. The guy really is God's gift to B-Movies.

That said, some are awesome, some are horrible (in a bad way), some are horribly awesome (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not), and some just... are.

I'd love to come out and say that My Name is Bruce is awesome, or horribly awesome, but in all honesty, it's middle-of-the-road. It just is. It exists mainly for fans, so from that perspective - it's a lot of fun if you love the guy, and I do. If you don't like Bruce Campbell or don't have the first clue who the hell he is - My Name is Bruce won't win you over.

The actual plot? A kid (with the worst emo/punk rock hairdo ever... I'd say that was the blunder of an untalented hair stylist on set, but I've actually seen kids wearing hair that retarded) obsessed with Bruce Campbell winds up taking him back to his home town when an ancient demon is unleashed by way of a curse.

The monster is very cheese. The locals take Bruce for the real monster-fighting deal, and Bruce, playing himself up as an arrogant asshole, goes along - putting them all in harm's way.

There's a love story with a local for Bruce. Bruce giving it his usual charm. Some horrible supporting actors. And some extremely random external cut scenes... very campy.

So if you love Bruce, give this a spin. If you don't love Bruce - go with Army of Darkness or Bubba Ho-Tep first.

Overall rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5) however, if you're a Bruce fan, I'd bump this up to a 3 out of 5.

Sand Serpents (2009)

2009-06-22T20:05:00.010-04:00

Release Date: 2009
Director: Jeff Renfroe
Starring: Jason Gedrick, Tamara Hope, Elias Toufexis, Sebastian Knapp
Tagline: "Terror Lies Beneath."
Random Trivia: Star Jason Gedrick appeared in both Iron Eagle and Born on the Fourth of July.

Wow. Now this - this is low budget cheese. Of course, Sci-Fi (soon to be SyFy, just shoot me now) also greenlit The Man with the Screaming Brain, so we shouldn't be surprised.

One thing Sand Serpents will never be accused of is false advertising. The movie is about... Sand Serpents. Attacking a U.S. military team fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Think Termors, with military guys, fighting low-budget looking Sandworms from Dune. That pretty much sums up this movie.

It's a study in stereotypes, as any cheese B-movie really is. You have the gruff sergeant hiding a soft side and kind heart. He also happens to be black, so he died first. You've got the tough ghetto chick who knows how to boost a car when required. The wussy, constantly complaining guy (thanks to James Cameron's Aliens). The bitchy ex-girlfriend as a boss.

Jason Gedrick plays Stanley, the unit leader. I suppose he's the star. His ex, Henle (Tamara Stone) happens to be along for the mission, tasked with judging whether or not a precious stones operation is, well, operational or not. Oh, yeah, they mostly just get one name.

Even high, thanks to how cardboard each character is, I can at least follow along with who's who! Yay!

The worms do obvious stuff like leave mounds that no one notices initially. And even when we do finally see one, the script gets confused - switching between singular and plural. It wasn't til about two thirds of the way in that we get confirmation of multiple worms, not just one. They also switch between calling them worms, and sand serpents. The latter kicks in about halfway through.

That's right - they down a fucking chopper!

The movie actually gives a little war commentary, showing both Taliban fighters and friendly locals. Surprisingly, this wasn't completely horrid. If it's on, watch it. Don't go out of your way for it, but if you're bored... there's worse movies out there. Several of which I've reviewed recently.

Overall rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5)

Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007)

2009-06-22T09:51:00.010-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: Víctor García
Starring: Amanda Righetti, Cerina Vincent, Erik Palladino, Tom Riley, Jeffrey Combs
Tagline: None. House on Haunted Hill had "Evil Loves to Party" - I guess evil just doesn't party like it used to.
Random Trivia: Combs is the only returning actor from the first movie. This is Victor Garcia's first feature length English language movie. I'm baked. Erik Palladino is a former MTV Vee-Jay. That sounds way too much like...

There are a couple of signs that your movie may be considered for the straight to DVD, low budget fare:

A) Your movie is a sequel... and only one actor is returning.

B) Your movie is a sequel to a remake - and the remake wasn't very good.

C) That one returning actor? It's not the star from the first film. It's a supporting role. And the star has been killed off, off-screen, and even her ghost is being played by someone else.

With A, B, and C firmly secured, Return to House on Haunted Hill (I'd like to buy a T, H, and E, Pat) goes through the motions of recreating the ever-so-popular group of pretty twenty-somethings stuck alone overnight in a haunted house scenario. Oh, and the backyard has a bit of a drop.

This time out, though, it's about a group of them being forced into the place by a pack of gun-wielding mercenaries looking for an ancient relic. On the other side of things is lone returnee Jeffery Combs' Dr. Richard Vannacutt, who seeks this idol the way Indiana Jones seeks a relic - with good intentions, but no real forward planning, because "it belongs in a museum."

Combs, while I'm at it, is the only one who can really act, although new lead Amanda Righetti, who takes up the reigns as Ariel Wolfe, sister to Ali Larter's Sara Wolfe from the first movie, isn't too shabby either.

Let's set the stage:

Sara Wolfe has committed suicide, or so it would seem. Sister Ariel investigates, only to meet Dr. Vannacutt, who claims that Sarah had agreed to return to the house to help him seek the statue of Baphomet, an ancient relic Vannacutt has been seeking for years and that is believed to be the center of the House's power.

Only flaw - Erik Palladino as Desmond, former student of Dr. Vannacutt, who has hired a bunch of mercs, and has a mole inside Vannacutt's inner circle that alerts him to the location of the statue - putting him on the offensive, taking Vannacutt, Ariel, Vannacut's assistant, and Ariel's love interest Paul hostage within the house.

And, of course, they get locked in.

In case you don't remember, the reason the house is haunted - other than the statue - is that a creepy doctor once experimented on psychiatric patients there. How original.

Once again, like with Bitten, this film's main attempt to save itself is via hot bi-sexual girl on undead girl action. Which leads to:

Ugly undead rooting boobs.

And aside from that, it's just going through the motions. Palladino's Desmond never comes off as really badass, nor to most of the mercs. The ghost sequences just aren't scary, although one or two might be deemed creepy. Low on the jump scares - and here's a little rant: Jump scares are normally overused, but honestly, this movie really, really needs them. If the rest of the movie isn't scary, at least a couple jolts keeps the viewer on the edge of his seat, albeit for the wrong reasons.

Alas, there's almost no fun to be had here. I'm sitting watching the action unfold thinking "what the fuck" for about a third of the movie. Characters fall into the usual traps.

Oh, and the statue. Don't even get me started on why, when you shoot it, it won't budge, but you can pry it loose with your bare hands.

Logic. Gotta love it!

This pulls a 2 mostly because it's better than Hammer of the Gods and End of the Line, so I can't justify giving it a 1. That by no means is an endorsement. Unlike Ariel, do not go in.

Overall rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5)

End of the Line (2007)

2009-06-22T00:09:00.008-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: Maurice Devereaux
Starring: Ilona Elkin, Nicolas Wright, Neil Napier, Emily Shelton, Tim Rozon
Tagline: "The End is Coming."
Random Trivia: Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Wow. I can't begin to explain just how this movie went wrong. My high was gone by the end of the movie so the coverage of that will be a little more clear.

To start, my completely randomly baked thoughts:

- On a train. Suddenly a chick is drowning in blood after being on a train. Huh?

- So there's an Asian girl looking scared in train station - of ghosts or subway gropers? Then she sees a guy with a rotting, maggot infested face... it still could go either way. She finishes by hopping in front of the rush hour shuttle

- Ok sure fuck in the dead train car that's really creepy... good idea... that'll end well!

These eyeless guys are some sort of harbinger of the apocalypse, or something. Ghostly and scary, supposedly.

Alright well if you can't tell, End of the Line is basically a movie set in the subway. Too high to follow much of the plot but I came down quick. You have a doomsday cult killing everyone they can to "save" them from the coming apocalypse. Yeah, another one of those.

I suppose this movie has something to say about religious conservatives, cults, and the extreme right. I'm sure there's some sort of reference to the Tokyo subway attacks, or something. Maybe. It just... falls apart. It's gory, but not in a good way. It goes for realism at one turn then over the top at the next. Case in point - a beheading scene, there the sword in question doesn't quite go all the way through. Shocking. But then throw in a pregnant woman being stabbed, laid next to her dying boyfriend in an embrace, and her now-aborted child ripped from the womb and placed in her arms.

There's ways that scene could have been effective. In this case, done for shock value alone.... I didn't care. Other than to ask "what was the point of that?"

I have no idea who anyone listed in the cast even is. This made the festival rounds and actually won a few awards. A lot of people will probably find it decent. The ending adds in the mandatory horror twist, which almost negates anything the film had to say during everything up to that point.

Overall, it's not a fun B-movie, it's not good as a straight horror, and it just doesn't work.

I will throw out one positive though - it's not as bad as Hammer of the Gods.

Overall Rating: Buzzed (1 out of 5)

Bitten (2008)

2009-06-21T18:10:00.009-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: Harvey Glazer
Starring: Jason Mewes, Erica Cox, Richard Fitzpatrick
Tagline: "Relationships can be Draining."
Random Trivia: Jason Mewes really wasn't acting in the Jay and Silent Bob films... and he's really not acting here! But we still love him. Discovered by Kevin Smith at a gas station. Seriously. He's worked at a video store and the Quick Stop. Sound familiar?

I'm giving this review the subtitle of "When Stunt Casting Goes Wrong, Part 2" - but I'll tell you what, I actually enjoyed this. For the record, "When Stunt Cast Goes Wrong, Part 1" would be Hammer of the Gods. Make no mistake: Bitten is far more entertaining that that pile of dreck.

It will by no means win any awards, but I found Bitten to be a rather surreal relationship movie, with naked, bloody vampire sex, hot bi-curious vampire action, and oddly timed necro moments. Well, there never really is a good time for necrophilia.

Jason Mewes plays Jason Mewes, as a medic. Ok, technically, his character's name is Jack. But he's Jason Mewes, medic guy, if you could believe he would somehow get through school, training, and be hired as the most foul-mouthed medic ever.

Jack's got a bitch of an ex-girlfriend and no social life due to working the graveyard shift. His only friend is his much older partner, Roger, a foul-mouthed perv who at least genuinely seems to care about Jack.

Then one night, after passing by the neighborhood junkies, Jack finds a half-naked, blood covered Danika (Erica Cox) in a pile of trash. Assuming she's OD'd, or maybe been attacked, he takes her in and cares for her after she refuses medical treatment.

Roger thinks she's a junkie, strung out on something. He's half right.

Danika, it turns out, is a vampire. Being something of a good girl, she tries to fight the hunger, but cannot control it. Mewes tries all the tricks - feeding her a cat, stealing a packet of blood from work, using himself - but Danika needs large servings of fresh, human blood. And by this time, Mewes is in love with her.

After Danika kills Jack's ex during a surprise visit, things get out of hand. In short succession, they begin knocking off local pimps and pushers to satiate her hunger, but it's not long before the supply of seedy assholes runs short. On top of this, Danika gets off on blood drinking. Their blood covered romp with his ex's corps just feet away is topped only by a passionate threesome with the spare girl winding up dead in a pool of blood between the sheets.

Fresh kills and bloody sex. If this turns you on, please have a seat over there...

Random thoughts between tokes:

- Remember the wannabe Jason Mewes in Freddy vs. Jason? Remember how they should have just hired the real Jason Mewes, because the role was pretty much a completely blatant rip-off of his Jay character?

- How badly did Mewes need crack money to do this? Ok, all joking aside, like I said I liked this movie to some extent, and Mewes is what he is - actually, he showed he can throw in something extra as Lester in Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Here he's himself, which works sometimes, and at sometimes really drags you out of the movie.

Erica Cox is cute and hot as needy vampire babe Danika. And has a great ass, which definitely helped my enjoyment of this movie.

Eventually, Jack realizes that forever is a long time, and Erica has to go. Some relationships just aren't mean to last.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

John Carpenter's Vampires (1998)

2009-06-21T10:47:00.009-04:00

Release Date: 1998
Director: John Carpenter
Starring: James Woods, Daniel Baldwin, Thomas Ian Griffith, Sheryl Lee
Tagline: "From the master of terror comes a new breed of evil."
Random Trivia: Dolph Lundgren was attached to the film at one point. Frank Darabount makes a cameo. I actually saw this during its theatrical run, and it was damn fun.

John Carpenter - the guy made it long ago, so I'm not sure if this can properly be called a B-movie. James Woods is a pretty big star to boot, although anyone in their teens/early 20s probably knows him best from Family Guy.

That said, the movie has a Baldwin, a kickin' country rock soundtrack, and vampires in the desert. It also has an awesome performance by Thomas Ian Griffith, who has been criminally underused in recent years.

The casting of Woods is puzzling - I don't really think of him as an action guy - but he does add a little something.

The opening raid is fucking brutally awesome. Jack Crow (Woods), with a name that would rock more than any other til Jack Sparrow came along, leads his crew of vampire hunters to an abandoned farmhouse in one dusty looking burg. Inside the house they spear vamps, pulling them out under the angry red sun of New Mexico with a truck winch, under the watchful eye of second in command Anthony Montoya (Daniel Baldwin). Vamps burst into flames as the team's padre performs the last rites.

Awesome. Fucking. Sequence.

You want back story? You don't fucking need it! If you really want to know, Crowe's team is funded by the Vatican. They know vampires are real, and they know they need someone - even as foul as Jack Crow - the do the dirty work, hunting them to the ends of the earth.

You could make an entertaining movie out of just following the crew slaughtering vampires, but of course, there needs to be some drama, so at a whore-filled after party (the best kind!), Jack's team is ambushed by vampire master Valek (Griffith). Only Jack and Montoya survive, leaving Jack looking for revenge. Valek, meanwhile, is looking for an ancient relic which will complete his transformation into the ultimate killing machine - a vampire able to withstand the power of the sun.

Simple. To the point. Fun to watch mashed.

Sheryl Lee adds the female interest for Montoya which is doomed to fail, as a recently bitten whore soon to turn vamp herself.

With their crew dead, and a green padre at their side, Crow and Montoya move to hunt down Valek - "the first and most powerful" vampire, according to the Vatican.

My only gripe is that the movie never really tops the coolness of the opening raid, and Woods fails to ever shake his own persona - it's James Woods, killing vampires. But at the same time, it's James Woods, killing vampires. Depending on your mood, this is a pass, or the coolest fucking vampire movie around.

Someone actually needs to update the vampire western sub-genre sometime soon, but until then - go back and check this out.

I may actually up my review pace right now, as there's a shitload of B-movies to come!

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Hammer of the Gods (2009)

2009-06-21T04:03:00.011-04:00

Release Date: 2009
Director: Todor Chapkanov
Starring: Zachery Ty Bryan, Melissa Leigh, Mac Brandt, Daz Crawford,
Alexis Peters
Tagline: "Vikings vs Werewolves."
Random Trivia: Zachery Ty Bryan. Yes, the oldest of the kids from Full House.

Thought we'd go for a different sort of B-movie today. This is very much a WTF casting affair. I'm pretty sure Hammer of the Gods went like this: Hey guys, we need a recognizable name to play Thor. But we can't afford anyone good. And most B-list celebs wouldn't touch the project. Is there anyone from a C or D list? No? E list? Washed up child star??? Oh, there we go.

Honestly, Zachery Ty Bryan would probably work for cheese at this point. He's been in virtually nothing since Home Improvement, and this marks the first time he's been a "star" in just about ever.

Here's the problem: Ol' Zach cannot act or deliver a line in any convincing fashion. He's just horrible. He tries for an accent, at times, but it's neither authentic or consistent. His supporting cast acts circles around him. Sure, this is DTV (or do we call it Direct to DVD now? Actually it might have been made for TV... not sure), but honestly, have some standards people!

As for the plot: Thor, along with his brother and other Vikings, heads out in search of the fabled hammer - you know it, you've seen it in comics most likely - only Thor is of the belief that his brother shall claim the hammer. Thor, you see, is just a little bit insecure. This is his coming out party, so to speak. And it has werewolves.

That's right. And Vikings vs. Werewolves is getting a tad desperate. I thought Shark vs. Crocodile was somewhat cool, but this is going overboard.

At least it has true B-movie unintentional comedy, like clothing dyed colours I'm fairly certain didn't exist in viking times, dialogue that drifts back and forth between vaguely authentic and oddly placed modern phrases, and lines like "Do not fail me again" - which has now officially been used in over 100 B movies! No, that's not a real stat.

You also have to love how snowfall picks up just for a climactic battle, where previously a single flake was nary to be seen.

And ooh, the vikings took only half the movie to figure out that the werewolves aren't just regular wolves, but made up of some of the local villagers.

Oh yeah - there's some female vikings and wolves to spice things up a bit. Basically a fail.

There's action, betrayal, and continuing blunders by Zach, who is in way over his head. It's dinner theatre bad. Watching a train wreck bad. I mean, if you can't even make a line like "not until we've killed everything on this island" work in the context of a B-movie, you're just...

Never give this guy a role again. I really hate to pan an actor this blatantly, but...

I'll stop this clusterfuck here. You know Thor will get the Hammer and save the day. Save yourself the pain, even if you love B-movies and utter cheese - skip this.

Overall Rating: Buzzed (1 out of 5)

Slither (2008)

2009-06-20T10:10:00.020-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: James Gunn
Starring: Nathan Fillion, Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry, Elizabeth
Banks, Tania Saulnier
Tagline: "Horror Has a New Face."
Random Trivia: Nathan Fillion starred in Firefly, which Gregg Henry
also made an appearance in. Fillion also turned up on Buffy, another
Joss Whedon show, and may soon be seen in Whedon's Dollhouse.

I've got a little theme lined up for my next few reviews: B-movies! We started with Repo! The Genetic Opera, which I'm actually going to go back and re-watch at some point in the near future. Next up: Slither.

Like over the top B-movie horror done with a comedic slant that is,
frankly, just fucking bent? You'll enjoy this one! Slither is just... well, fucked. It's a gross-out movie with heart, the love story of a man, his wife, and his intergalactic parasite.

My memory on this is foggy - gee, wonder why - so I'm going strictly from the notes on this one. We start off with a very simple question - Why follow a trail of slime into the woods? Seriously. Why fucking follow it? Never, ever follow a creepy trail of slime into the woods in the middle of the night.

Oh, one thing - I'm all for older/guys younger girls, and vice versa, but that dude is just CREEPY. He looks slimey, and watching the scene where he tries to make it with the wife... seriously, I almost lost my lunch.

Here we go - see, notes have served their purpose. Thus we have the start of our story - Grant Grant, the man with the worst name ever, has a much younger, extremely frigid, trophy wife. After a night out at the bar, he follows some piece of ass or other into the woods - there's backstory here but I'm too high to care/follow it. Grant and said piece of ass find a trail of slime, and follow it to find a meteor, or something else, that fell from the sky. And BLAM! Grant is shot in the chest by something spear-like, that burrows into him, and you can see where this is going already.

I would like to take a time out here to address my notes re: the bar skank. Fine actress. The character is supposed to be a bit... dirty, and have a crush on Grant Grant. Great job. Dear writers: Do not use lines like "Are you ok" when someone is obviously not ok. Honestly, my immediate response is generally (as in this case) "does he look ok, bitch?"

He just had an alien creature worm its way into his fucking chest! No, he's not ok. He's not ordering a pizza or going out for Chinese, either.

Soon enough, Grant goes home, his infection begins to spread, and he starts turning into... something. All the while staying true to his wife (having ditched the tramp after remembering he's a married man... or thing... or manthing). And right about now you can see where this is heading, but it actually becomes quite the homage to several different horror flicks while being very much a riot in its own right.

And then we have the hero of the flick: Nathan Fillion's Bill Parady, the local law in town. He's good ol' small town sherrif, but not cut from the same cloth as most of the locals: he doesn't get deer season, and is a tad more edumacated than most.

You know those homages I mentioned? I'll list them now: Alien, The Thing, Predator, The Faculty, Romero's zombie movies, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and so on. Some of those may not be intentional, some definitely are.

At some point I realize Grant Grant is played by the dad from Mallrats, Michael Rooker. He's aged but then I also notice that it's almost 15 years since that film came out. Damn.

Grant gets narsty, and soon the town's pet population begins to dwindle. Somehow, he keeps his transformation from his wife. He puts a lock on the basement door. Craves raw meat. Can't control his hunger. And, of course, soon enough, his secret gets out, as Starla, the aforementioned trophy wife (Elizabeth Banks), finds out. Her confrontation with Grant is interrupted by the Sherrif, and Thing-Grant makes a run for it. It's actually one of the last times he makes a run for anything. Before long, he's slug/tentacle thing Grant.

Throughout this, his heart never betrays him - although mutated, under control by an alien parasite, and picking off the town's livestock as the sherrif and a hunting party track him, he maintains his love for Starla.

How sweet.

Of course, all alien infections need to spread - cue Grant impregnating the trailer trash he was chummy with at the bar at the start of the movie. Alien rape. See, now Japanese horror fans have something to cheer for! She winds up preggo to the bursting point - literally - and upon exploding, a million and one slugs head for town, shoving themselves down people's throats to take over their body and mind (souls optional).

This brings us to Kylie (Tania Saulnier), who is forced to fight off slugs in the bath whilst her family is taken over. She comes close enough to slug infestation that she actually winds up sharing memories with the worm - which turns out to have a sort of hive mind/shared memory thing going.

Nightmare on Elm Street? And while we're bringing up references to other movies again, there's a few POV shots that are reminiscient of the Evil Dead movies.

There's all kinds of fun once things really get out of hand. A hot for teacher reference. Zombie-like slug controlled minions. Gross-outs galore. The movie isn't so much scary as it is gross in a fun way. Someone actually gets called a turd in a loving manner. Explosions. A slug-controlled zombie deer!

Yup, it's a deer.

At this point, you really just need to see this for yourself.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

2009-06-19T01:42:00.013-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Starring: Anthony Stewart Head, Paris Hilton, Alexa Vega, Paul Sorvino, Sarah Brightman
Tagline: "Not Your Parent's Opera."
Random Trivia: Was originally a stage play. Paris Hilton brought some of her own costumes to the set.

I'm fucking BAKED for this. Need any more information? Well, I'm typing my notes on the PC rather than my usual pen and paper notation whilst watching this, and it's not pretty.

I think we have a plot. There's widespread disease. Genco or whatever they're called (genetics company) starts a program where you get all sorts of procedures and transplants - but if you can't pay, beware the repo process...

From the Notes of the Baked Reviewer:

- Cool animated intro, comic book style

- You can tell straight off, from the opening song, that the producers/director et al were really trying for a modern Rocky Horror Picture Show. They might have missed the mark but so far, so good...

- Anthony Stewart Head! Someone who can act AND sing... the first to appear thus far in this movie. His daughter's fucking annoying though (on-screen daughter. I'm sure if he actually has a daughter, she's a peach. Speaking of peaches... mmm... peaches...).

- Ok as time goes on I'm liking the daughter more

- Nathan's (Head) backstory is done comic style, showing his attempt to cure his ailing wife and the agonizing choice to sacrifice her for his unborn daughter.

- Music is a bit weak. That's not a good sign in a musical. Head's singing is still best in the movie thus far. He's put out a CD in the past and was awesome in the Buffy musical episode.

- Atmosphere is cool, music needs some work.

- "My brother and sister should fuck" was seriously a lyric just now.

- So Nathan keeps daughter Shilo secret, continuing her treatment. At 17, things get out of hand, she meets Blind Mag (Sarah Brightman), who is at the mercy of the Repo Man (I think), who will take her eyes.

At this point I'm having serious trouble following the plot. There's some awesome fetish wear and chicks on screen so the film is keeping my attention at least. I'm just kinda staring at it.

More Notes:

- Rotti (Paul Sorvino) is after Shilo, and lures her with a promised cure

- GeneCo is repairing all sorts of defects

- Paris plays Emma Sweet, cannot fucking sing and gets booed off the stage. I didn't realize this was a documentary...

- Rotti claims Nathan has spiked Shilo's medicine

- SPOILER!!! Nathan (Head) dies in a pool of blood in his daugher's arms. Cool scene.

- Turns out he was a repo man

- Shilo isn't a bad singer after all

Don't let my confuzzled notes fool you - I'm actually suggesting that any pothead grab this movie, throw it on, and relax. It's the zany kind of weird that makes it a pretty decent pothead experience. As a movie, it's a pale shadow of Rocky Horror, but it's far from horrible - or perhaps it's just so horrible that it's entertaining.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Signs (2002)

2009-06-18T23:59:00.001-04:00

Release Date: 2002
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin
Tagline: "It's Not Like They Didn't Warn Us."
Random Trivia: Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood both turned down the lead role, which was originally written as an older character.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: M. Night Shyamalan has two and two thirds worth of quality film shot to date. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and the first two thirds of Signs. I'm sure I'll address those others at some point, but it's a cloudy day, I'm high, and I feel like a few chills (note to HalfBaked: you jumped in Drag Me to Hell, there's witnesses, and I do believe the corn field scenes in Signs are rather creepy. Yeah Yeah I'm sure you wouldn't jump at them...).

Shoes. Corn. PJs.

Signs is the story of Graham Hess, who gives up the church (where he was a Reverend) after his wife is killed walking at the side of the road when a driver nods off and loses control. Graham lives a simple farm life with his kids Morgan (Rory Culkin) and Bo (Abigail Breslin), and his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), a former minor-league star who holds the home run - and strike-out - records.

Graham struggles through life as a single, widowed father, brother pitching in, until one day the kids, alerted by the family pups, discover what is soon to become national news - crop circles in their corn fields. Soon enough, the crop circles spread across the globe, begging the question: What kind of Signs are they, and do we have any idea what title we could give this movie? Anything at all that would be suitable? Short, to the point, and completely descriptive of the movie's contents? Anything???

For the first two thirds of the movie, Shyamalan nails it. The atmosphere. The performances. The jump scares. The corn field scenes are fucking creepy.

As the plot unfolds, alien ships show up over Earth. The Hess family finds someone - or something - creeping around their yard, walking on their roof, and Bo does some creepy shit like getting "feelings" and saying "There's a monster in my room can I have a glass of water."

Not to mention tinfoil hats, in one of the best scenes ever to feature tinfoil hats.

Early on, the movie suffers from the typical Shyamalan plot devices - the convenient source of info, which happens to be a book on alien invasion which has all the answers, and himself - a tepid performance as the driver responsible for the death of Graham's wife. Who happens to have trapped an alien in his pantry. 'Ol Mother Hubbard?

Overall, however the movie rocks and builds to a climax as the family boards up the house to fend off alien ground troops.

And then, with the four of them holed up in the basement, door jammed, lights flickering, they-

drop the fucking ball. I'm calling out M. Night on this one. You should have stopped the movie here! Have some balls and end it on a cliffhanger. Let the audience decide whether the Hess family lives or dies. Cut to black, and leave it, because this is the high point of the movie. It's fucking scary, at least as a concept, and it works out pretty good on film.

Alas, the movie continues, because Hollywood likes neat endings, and Shyamalan needs his twist. And it stops being scary with the big reveal - the lame ass, poorly lit CGI alien.

From here on out, Shyamalan begins a downward spiral - in this flick, and career-wise.

I'm still giving it a decent rating. It was a cool concept that just didn't have the stones to go all the way, but it's still damn entertaining. The twist - how they fend off the alien, and how all kinds of signs pointed to that moment - was half-baked, which reflects the score the movie is getting.

That's not to say you shouldn't watch it. With the lights out. On a stormy night. Just turn it off when things go dark in the basement...

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

2009-06-16T23:03:00.009-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: Paul Greengrass
Starring: Mat Damon, Julia Stiles
Tagline: "This Summer Jason Bourne Comes Home."
Random Trivia: Jason Bourne never smiles in the movie, and I never smiled watching it.

Does my random trivia give away my thoughts on this one?

I don't even know where to begin. There's some sort of plot, but it's fucking messy. I've seen the first two movies. The first one was horrible, and the second one I can say that I at least enjoyed for a few action shots.

Lets stick to simple: Jason Bourne still doesn't know who the fuck he is, only that he's a trained killing machine somehow involved with the government. He's all over Europe, and suddenly finds a reporter writing about him in the paper. Seems the reporter has a source who knows the truth about who and what he is. And of course, Bourne needs to find him.

That's all you need to know. Now let me break down all that is wrong with this movie.

It insists upon itself. That's right, Lois. It takes itself far too seriously for a Bond ripoff, and Mat Damon, due to the no smiling policy, gets no decent quips, looks grumpy the whole film (ok so he has reason but no one walks around that pissed off 24/7), and in general, there's no levity at all whatsoever in the movie.

Fuck the plot, as I mentioned. I could barely follow it. I'm not sure if being baked really had much to do with that.

My exact notes: WTF?? WTF?? Did Mat Damon just pull out a dish towel?!? (yup, and he's fighting with it, and there's noises showing how brutal and hard this dish towel or whatever the fuck it is, is. Yeah I worded that horribly. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?).

I can't even make out the action because of the fucking SHAKY CAM! It's giving me a headache. WTF!

Here endeth my notes on the action sequence that is the towel fight.

Seriously, I don't think Paul Greengrass actually filmed any fights. I'm fairly certain that instead, he took a bunch of quick shaky shots of Mat Damon looking angry, badass, etc., and then edited them together with some sound effects to make it seem like there was a fight staged.

It's that bad. This is one of the worst-shot movies I've ever seen in regards to action sequences. At least for any movie that had something resembling a budget.

This is not the most eloquent review, and for good reason: The entire movie was a waste of my fucking time.

Hi Cat. There's a cat looking at me.

I'd attempt to smack the director and producers of this dreck, but on second thought I'll just hastily edit something together to make it look like I did. It worked at the box office for The Bourne Ultimatum...

Overall Rating: Buzzed (1 out of 5)

Bad Boys 2 (2003)

2009-06-15T00:24:00.008-04:00

Release Date: 2003
Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Joe Pantoliano
Tagline: -
Random Trivia: Michael Bay is in the movie as the driver of a car Marcus tries to commandeer.

So a bunch of years pass after the original Bad Boys. Michael Bay puts out Pearl Harbor, Martin Lawrence stinks it up with Black Knight, and Will Smith has the disappointing Men in Black II - although to be honest, he also had Ali.

Which leads us to Bad Boys II, where director and stars will attempt to get each individual career back on track.

In case you were not aware, this film is also set in Miami.

It's equal billing this time. My how the mighty have fallen. Lawrence was panned in Black Night, and really hasn't done much of anything other than Big Momma's House as far as hits go. Seriosuly, it's rather sad as he's way more talented than that gimmick. Whatever. Bay would probably rather shoot a cereal commercial before revisiting Pearl Harbor, and even Smith could use a return to solid action.

So what do we get? One of the most controversial action movies in years. Fuck yeah! It's not that the movie is overly great - it's on par with the original, but it's just a big dumb action movie with shaky cam work. But apparently, some booty shaking and a naked female corpse with a huge rack bloodied the waters, and the censorship happy legions and conservative rightwing nutjobs came out swinging.

We also get one of the most killer opening action sequences around (The Dark Knight has since surpassed it but that's talking apples and oranges).

There's a lot going on here, but in reality, it's all mindless action, so I'll skip to the chase:

As the film opens, Marcus Bennett (Lawrence) and Mike Lowery (Smith) go undercover to raid a bunch of KKK creeps who also happen to be running Ecstasy. The X is being sold in clubs to various slutty looking chicks - see above - in plain sight, making this operation the worst kept secret since Tom Cruise being secretly straight. Err...

The drugs in question belong to Johnny Tapia (Jordi Mollà), who happens to see himself as some sort of Christ-like figure, has an endearing mom with a wicked shotgun, and who has no problem cutting up Russian mobsters and shooting his own cousin for failing him. He also dotes on his daughter whilst threesoming with some of the most brain-dead chicks in the southern U.S.

Class act all around is what I'm trying to say.

Yup, that's one huge-ass pair of dead titties. Once Tapia gets his money for the X, he then smuggles it back to Cuba in bodies.

Meanwhile, Syd, little sister of Marcus, is deep undercover - unbeknownst to him - trying to take Tapia down, when the "Bad Boys" get involved.

There's what little you need to know of the plot.

Bad Boys 2 raked in the dough at the box office, thanks in part to a massive amount of media coverage over gratuitous violence and objectification of women. Wow. Dead boobs managed to steal headlines. I guess it paved the way for the frenzy we had with Anna Nicole Smith going tits up.

Over the course of the film, the guys shoot things, shit blows up, and a good time was had by all. Except most of the people who wound up dead.

Random Pothead Observations:

- Lawrence is wearing a Michael Vick jersey. This is before Vick blew his career by being an inhumane asshole.

- Henry Rollins appears in the opening sequence then pretty much vanishes. He plays the usual Henry Rollins hardass character.

- Rollins' character is also a tool - the guys bust a drug ring, seize a ton of illegal arms, attempted murder charges to go around, and the guy isn't happy.

- Marcus gets no action in either movie. How sad. Let this be a lesson, kids: Never marry.

- Things I never want to personally say: "I smell my ass burning."

One last thing I learned from this movie:

Apparently, rats fuck just like us!

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Bad Boys (1995)

2009-06-14T00:28:00.018-04:00

Release Date: 1995
Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Martin Lawrence, Will Smith,Téa Leoni, Joe Pantoliano
Tagline: "Whatcha gonna do?"
Random Trivia: Bay's first movie, as he made the step from commercial guy to big action guy. The roles of Marcus and Mike were supposedly written for Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey. Will Smith's Mike Lowrey was also destined for Arsenio Hall at one point.

Just so we're clear:

Bad Boys takes place in Miami.

I loved this film when it first came out. Sure, it's a film who stole it's title from the theme song to COPS, but I tend to go for action-packed cop films of the Leathal Weapon, Die Hard, Beverly Hills Cop variety. Then along came the mid-90s and most of those films either had weak sequels (Die Hard with a Vengeance, Beverly Hills Cop 3) or dried up completely for a while.

Enter Michael Bay, making his feature film directorial debut. Seriously. Whilst oft derided for the carnage and sheer stupidity of his films, I think the main issue most people really have - probably without knowing it - is that he spawned a legion of imitators who flooded the market with big explosions making up for little or no plot development.

When you look at his actual catalog, however, he really hasn't done that much of the offensive variety: a forgettable waste of time (Armageddon) that was marketed like crazy and did fill the theatres, and the bomb that was Pearl Harbor. Aside from that, you've got a decent film in The Rock, the Bad Boys movies, and Transformers. That's it. They may not be to your liking, but he probably takes more shit than he deserves.

Up til Bad Boys, Bay had done commercials, a Playboy model video, and a couple of music videos. Then along came this Martin Lawrence vehicle, with the comedian playing lead in a buddy-cop action drama that obviously took a few ideas from Eddie Murphy's best known franchise. Oh and that's right - Martin Lawrence took first billing in this. The role of Mike Lowery, given to Will Smith after Bay saw him on Fresh Prince of Bel Air, was originally slated for Arsenio Hall. Which would have been a fucking disaster.

Throw in Joe Pantoliano (later seen in The Matrix pondering why he didn't take the blue pill) and a pre-David Duchovney Téa Leoni (damn hot in this flick), and you've got a pretty strong cast. All it needs is a bad guy ripped straight out of Die Hard - check! - and you're ready to go.

I think that plummet actually symbolizes Tea's career after this movie.

People's main complaint about Bay's movies is the gratuitous violence and sleaze. That's half the reason I watch these type of movies!

If that's not your thing, obviously you're skipping it. But the original Bad Boys is a fun flick otherwise. Lawrence as Marcus pulls off the family man who's trying to juggle his home life with being a cop, and Smith easily settles into the role of rich kid living his dream. Of course we need a story, so a friend of Smith's Mike Lowrey gets killed, a bunch of drugs are lifted from the police lockup, Téa is the only witness, and the rest of the movie is action, explosions, and Captain Howard (Pantoliano) pulling his hair out as the price tag for all the carnage continues to grow.

Made all the more fun since I was baked, I really have no issue with these flicks. I feel like this entire review is becoming an apology for liking mindless action, but fuck it - the real contreversy didn't kick in til Bad Boys 2 came out anyway. The first film is a pretty standard affair helped out by a strong cast.

And since you've got two funny guys in the lead instead of one, you get some pretty good quips:

(Re Lowery's car): It's a shiny dick with two chairs in it!

"Don't be alarmed, we're negroes..."

Lets take a close look at the image above. Closer. Just a little closer... that's right! If you've got a keen eye, you'll catch it - Martin Lawrence is the ONLY black guy at that club other than his partner!

Fire!

I actually do like Téa Leoni and it's a shame her show, The Naked Truth, didn't last longer. Yes, I actually watched it.

What else can we say about this flick? It's often forgotten, but this was the flick that proved Will Smith could work on the big screen as an action star. Independence Day came out the following summer, and from there on, the Will Smith Summer Blockbuster became a common occurrence.

Final thoughts: If baked, needing action with some comedy, and the first Beverly Hills Cop is not available (or you just watched it), Bad Boys is an excellent choice.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Transformers (2007)

2009-06-13T13:44:00.013-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: Michael Bay
Starring: Megan Fox, Peter Cullen, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Rachael Taylor, John Turturro, Jon Voight, Hugo Weaving
Tagline: "Their war. Our world."
Random Trivia: The voice of Orson Welles from War of the Worlds is heard via Bumblebee's radio. Welles final role recorded was the voice of the planet-eating Unicron in the 1986 Transformers animated movie. In police car mode, Barricade has "To punish and enslave" printed on him. Megan Fox *drools*...

If you watch no other movie with a hot chick bending over the hood of a car, at least watch this one!

Yeah, we know what you're thinking Shia!

Welcome to my Transformers review. I've been a bit behind, this being the first time I've smoked in a while. But I'm in a good mood tonight, the highest I've been for weeks, and I thought with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen due, I'd get to a Transformers review. Like how we reviewed the three Terminator movies as Terminator: Salvation came out. Did I say three??? Well... pot will do that to you.

I'm also going on a Michael Bay kick and will have a couple more of his explosion-laden flicks on the way. In the meantime:

Transformers, a fucking Hasbro toy. One of the coolest toys ever I might add. A cool cartoon to go with it, and the greatest casting move ever in the animated movie from the 80s - Orson Welles as the planet-destroying Unicron. For a simple toy, that's quite the heritage, and a live-action movie, when announced, sounded like a studio cash grab - a horrid idea. How the hell could any movie live up to the various cartoon series and toy lines?

Going back to development, there were cries of "this will rape my childhood." The only bright spot was that Steven Spielberg was producing. Then we got word the Michael "Lets Blow Shit Up Real Good" Bay was directing. And it was back to "oh fuck" for the fans. Honestly, I like the Bad Boys movies, but Pearl Harbor? There's a special place in my heart for The Rock as well, but then you have Armageddon, which to me was a colossal waste of a movie.

Hmm. A legend as a producer. An iffy director, but one who can handle action and explosions. This really could have gone either way.

So in my fine tradition of boiling reviews down to a single sentence: Transformers did not rape my childhood.

The story is all over. It opens with a Decepticon (read: giant evil robots from another world who take the shape of machines to disguise themselves) attack on an army base in the middle east. They're looking for info that apparently the U.S. government has about the Allspark - the source of life on their home world, Cybertron. Also seeking the spark, and sticking up for otherwise squashible humans, are the Autobots (read: the good guys). Fuck it I don't need to do much background, you know the toys/cartoon. Optimus Prime leads the Autobots. Josh Duhamel leads a group of the surviving soldiers as they try to make it the fuck out of the desert alive. Shia LaBeouf leads one of the luckiest lives around given he gets to stare at Megan Fox a whole lot.

Yes, people do get killed in this. No blood though kids - remember, it's PG-13, so things like blood can't be shown. And we wonder why kids today don't value life...

Meanwhile, Shia Le Poof is a kid who winds up with one of the Autobots for a car - a gift from dad for getting good grades. The late Bernie Mac plays the seedy used car dealer who offloads the camero-shaped Bumblebee (he was a VW Beetle in the cartoon), and we have our first WTF moment of the night. Because it's fucked that I'm referring to Bernie Mac in the past-tense.

Megan Fox is... uhhh... Megan Fox... ummm... ahh fuck it. She's the hottest piece of eye candy out there right now. I have no idea what her performance in this movie was like - I think it was decent. I was lost in my thoughts most of the time she was on-screen. She's the love interest for Shia's Sam Witwicky, the geeky kid who gets the girl. See, not only is his car a Transformer, as he soon learns, he's also a descendant of the man who first discovered the Transformers on earth, a century earlier when Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving), evil leader of the evil Decepticons, evily crashed in the evil North Pole. Evil.

Having fun yet?

Shia has his ancestor's eye glasses, upon which the location of the Allspark can be found.

There's a fuckload of subplots going on. Rachael Taylor plays an NSA team member who discovers the transmission/code the Decepticons are using to steal top secret data. There's something with the wife of Josh Duhamel's Captain Lennox that looks as if it was left entirely on
the cutting room floor. Jon Voight is the secretary of defense and is given some of the worst lines in a film not exactly teeming with stellar dialogue to begin with - although he delivers them as solidly as he can. John Turturro plays a seriously weird agent of Sector 7, a so-top-secret-even-the-government-doesn't-know-about-it government agency created under the Hoover administration to deal with the discovery of Megatron and the Allspark way back then.

We're going to do a G, B, and U breakdown from here:

The Good: The "transform" noise. Brings back memories. Peter Cullen returns to voice Optimus Prime. The effects are awesome, especially the transformations. The opening scene is strong, and sets the tone for the action sequences throughout. Lennox's wife making a "girls don't fart" reference, just because that's a personal gripe of mine. The robotic sounds over the studio logos gets you in the mood for a giant robot action flick.

The transform sound is actually soothing. Megan Fox. Sam's mother telling Sector 7 agents to get their hands "off her bush." The fact that the Autobots learned Earth's languages via the world wide web - oh fuck, look out for the lolspeak/l337speak, ppl!

The action overall. Megan Fox's ass. Seeing Optimus Prime for the first time. I still have that toy somewhere, and it was the coolest toy ever. Seriously, every kid wanted an Optimus Prime growing up.

The Bad: Hugo Weaving replacing the original voice of Megatron. Nothing against Mr. Weaving - he's awesome in The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, and I'm thrilled to hear he'll be in The Hobbit - but they brought back Peter Cullen for Optimus, and they really should have stuck with the rest of the original voice case as much as possible as well.

Megatron really doesn't resemble his cartoon alter-ego much.

The Allspark just reminds me of Energon cubes. If you know the cartoon, you know they're always looking for energon cubes. Multiple series have been built on this idea. Fuck. Find an alternative fuel source already!

Why is it always Earth that aliens come across in their intergalactic battles? I want to see a movie where we stumble across an alien world and COMPLETELY FUCK WITH THEM.

The Ugly: Too many subplots. Hopefully they pare down the number of human characters in the next one and keep it simple. Rachael Taylor's entire performance could have been dropped from this and you'd wind up with what is essentially the same movie.

The mouths of the Transformers move. Just fucking no.

And as much as I like John Turturro he's just a bit too camp for this.

That's about it. The reason I went this way is I passed the fuck out before the end of the movie and woke up to the DVD menu music. That's not a critique of the quality of the film, but rather the quality of the weed.

Final thoughts: Megan Fox has an awesome ass. Transformers in the end is an excellent popcorn movie, made a tad better than most by excellent CGI, solid action, decent acting, and remembering that in the end, this is a movie based on a toy. And it didn't rape my
childhood.

One more for the road...

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5) with a Bonus Toke for an extra .5

Family Guy: Blue Harvest (2007)

2009-06-07T00:25:00.018-04:00

Release Date: 2007
Director: Dominic Polcino
Starring: Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Seth Green, Mila Kunis,
Chevy Chase, Adam West, Patrick Warburton,
Tagline: None - but the "real" Blue Harvest tagline was "Horror beyond imagination."
Random Trivia: When the Millenium Falcon jumps to Hyperspace, the Doctor Who theme/intro kicks in. The face shown is that of the 4th Doctor, played in the series by Tom Baker (the oldest surviving actor to have played the Doctor). Blue Harvest was actually a fake title used on Return of the Jedi to keep fans away from an on-location shoot.

Welcome to my Blue Harvest review, muthafuckas! With new and improved embedded YouTube clips.

And what that really means is, I got bored and decided to post some YouTube clips.

George Lucas actually approved this spoof. That almost - almost - makes me want to not torture him for the abomination that was the prequel trilogy.

Family Guy has been hit and miss since it returned to air after Fox canceled it and greenlit every lame-ass "I'm a whore on an island look at me" reality TV concept. Blue Harvest marks what is probably the best "episode" since it returned. I say "episode" as I'm reviewing the DVD release, which was put out separately from the rest of the season as a 48 minute straight-to-DVD feature with scenes not in the original broadcast.

"High" Lights:

- Spot on spoof of Star Wars.

- Blue Harvest is actually pretty accurate in its critique of the film, pointing out the obvious:

* Greedo should NOT shoot first.
* Was Luke's uncle NEVER tempted to tell him the truth about his father (wasn't his uncle Jimmy Smits? - this isn't in the episode, I just realized it).
* Who the hell designs a massive space station - the fucking Death Star no less - with an area completely vulnerable to attack that would allow a single shot to destroy the entire thing?!?

* Chris as Luke: "Um, isn't a parsec a unit of distance, not time?"

And then there's the random, and just plain fucking funny:

- Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo turn up to voice Clark and Lois Griswald from the Vacation series.

- Obi-Wan played by the pedo Herbert

- Darth Stewie

- "Aren't you a little fat to be a storm trooper?"

- Herbert's light saber is limp

- Meg is that muck-monster in the garbage compactor

- The Cantina band calls for requests - "Play that same song!"

- Pothead references a'plenty!

- The Doctor Who scene is trippy and made me smile

- Danny Elfman really does ruin everything. For reference, see the horrid score to Terminator: Salvation. Way to fuck something up when half the work is already done for you!

- "You still got that bag I gave you?"

My only complaints are this: Herbert is awesome in small doses, and I have no problem with twisted humour. I'm probably going to hell. But the "I'm having the Time of My Life" musical number was too fucking long. Ol' Herb's boy-luvin' ass needs to be kept to short scenes and quick jokes or he gets tiresome.

That, and they used Rush Limbaugh for a gag. Fuck that fat fuck. Yup, that's well-crafted criticism, I know.

Spaceballs also deserves a mention at this point - as does the oft forgotten Hardware Wars (yes I've seen it), from back in 1977, and the Robot Chicken spoof - kindly pointed out at the end of the episode.

Hardware Wars:

I simply cannot wait for the Empire Strikes Back spoof, entitled "Something Something Something Dark Side." Oh, and Bobba Fett is played by the fucking Chicken!

Overall rating: 3/4 Baked (4 out of 5)

Hancock (2008)

2009-06-06T00:20:00.013-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: Peter Berg
Starring: Will Smith, Jason Bateman, Charlize Theron
Tagline: "He is saving the world whether we like it or not."
Random Trivia:Vince Gilligan, who wrote the second draft of the script - which had been floating around for a decade before Sony finally picked it up - was credited as a writer on over two dozen episodes of The X-Files, and also gained producer credits later in the series.

What can I say about Hancock... oh, I'm the fucking reviewer. That's right. A lot.

I was lightly baked - buzzed by the end - for this. I thought I'd throw that in for no reason other than this: I find that being high doesn't really make a bad movie enjoyable, or a good movie dull. The high simply enhances a good movie - and makes the flaws of a bad one all the more obvious.

Hancock is a movie that doesn't know where its going. Much like Will Smith's Hancock himself, it doesn't know what its purpose is, isn't sure of itself, and is, for the most part, wasted potential.

The basics: John Hancock, known simply as Hancock, is a superhero. Just not a very good one. He causes more harm than good. The public hates him. He's an alcoholic. And then one day, as much by happenstance as by skill, he saves Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), a P.R. guy who decides to return the favor - by giving Hancock an image makeover.

It's a great concept. A destructive superhero. A fuckup. A guy who can't stop a freeway chase without causing 9$ million in damages. Of course, Smith is already familiar with expensive freeway chases, having been part of Bad Boys 2. And there's problem number one: Smith gives it his all - but he really can't pull off gruff. His fake-ass neat beard that was supposed to look unkempt annoyed the fuck out of me. Was the fucking thing drawn on?

Despite that, problem number two is the bigger issue here: Hancock should have been an awesome dark comedy, but it seems those in charge didn't have the balls to go all the way. Halfway through we start leaning towards a family-friendly outing. Sure, the word asshole is thrown around a lot, but we've got the cute kid, the bonding moments, the whole "do the right thing and good things will happen" story line.

And we get lame shit like Hancock asking someone if it's ok to save them...

Let me tell you about my vision of Hancock: Hancock is a fuck-up. He's a guy with super powers, who just doesn't give a shit. He does the bare minimum for a guy with his talents - he saves people, because that's his role, and he doesn't know what else to do with his time - other than drink. He uses the word fuck. He shows up with tramps at seedy motels. He tries, in vain, to figure out just what the fuck he is and where he fits in. He causes all sorts of chaos when he does try to "help" - and he doesn't stick around to defend himself. If a couple bystanders get hurt due to his efforts, he doesn't give a shit. He's got tunnel vision.

That sort of Hancock would have been interesting, but its as if the writers/director got half way there - and then pussied out.

Instead, we get a luke-warm tale of redemption with one of the most idiotically contrived plots I've seen in ages. Hancock believes he's the only one of his kind, immortal, and unstoppable - but he has a weakness. I won't spoil it, but keep an eye out for lingering close-ups from Hancock's perspective.

The movie has its moments - YouTube holding a collection of Hancock's failures, Charlize Theron being smoking hot as Embrey's wife Mary, and a whale toss (spoiled by many a commercial) - but then there's Hancock shoving a guy's head up another guy's ass, done off-screen and fully clothed to ensure a safe rating. And instead of the awesomely dark character study/black comedy that could have been, we get a cheerful Will Smith vehicle that just exists, for no real reason other than that it wouldn't be summer without a Will Smith blockbuster. Actually, is there even one this year?

Overall rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5)

The Happening (2008)

2009-06-05T01:01:00.019-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, John Leguizamo, Zooey Deschanel
Tagline: "We've Sensed It. We've Seen The Signs. Now... It's Happening."
Random Trivia: M. Night Shyamalan plays the voice of Joey, who is never seen on-screen. This is the first movie directed by Shyamalan where he doesn't appear on-screen, but continues his trend of having a small role in each of his movies.

It's M. Night Shyamalan - expect a twist, right?

I'm going to do something rash right off the bat. I'm going to ruin the end of this movie for you. If you view this as a calamity and wish to avoid my betrayal of the script, skip this review. Leave now. However, if you wish to avoid the calamity that is this movie, carry on.

You sure?

Here we go:

The plants did it.

Considering how pathetically fucking obvious this is thanks to multiple, lingering, foreboding shots of trees, bushes, and fields, I'm not sure I've really given much away. M. Night Shyamalan is getting really lazy with his "big twist" moments at this point. In fact, there's no real "big twist" ending in this movie at all. There is an obvious set up for future events not seen mind you, but the reveal comes much, much earlier, and we spend half the movie watching Wahlberg and co. run in terror from a summer breeze.

Seriously.

I will say this. There is an awesomely trippy-when-high intro of clouds rolling across the sky. Or maybe that was just me. Ooh, now the sky has turned dark. Scary.

Cut to: Puppy dog. Not so scary.

Where were we? Oh yes. A movie review. M. Night has about 2 and 2/3rds worth when it comes to decent movies - The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and two thirds of Signs. Actually my main complaint there was with the final act - once the aliens are revealed, the scary goes away. But I'll get to that in a future review. For now, we have this Mark Wahlberg vehicle of man getting his ass kicked by nature. Not in a gory, the trees are alive, strangled by a vine kind of way, but in a slow build, suspenseful thriller. Or I guess that was the goal here. Whatever it was, it fell short of the mark.

Lets look at why:

- After a strong start - something's up in Central Park, some people have become seemingly frozen still, and a bunch are killing themselves (including a lemming effect off the high-rises - very creepy, excellent scene), Shyamalan reveals a lame-duck plot that really doesn't strike much terror into our hearts: Nature has been pushed to the brink. It decides to fight back.

- We know Wahlberg is going to survive. His portrayal of High School science teacher Elliot Moore is too goody-goody not to. Oh, and the first of many conveniences - someone with a background in science, who happened to be lecturing on the wonders of nature, gets stuck battling it (or fleeing from it, mostly).

- We're not really terrified of an enemy all leafy and green, and the idea of plants releasing airborne biological warfare against us, while interesting, is set up in such a haphazard way that it just becomes silly.

- Obvious foreshadowing, with "why are the bees disappearing?" asked in Wahlberg's classroom early in the film, and the usual global warming/pollution etc. answers come out. Seriously, you don't have to make things this obvious. The audience is not THAT brain-dead.

* My pot-addled brain thinks it just saw Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. A quick check of IMDB - yup, that's Alan Ruck! When Cameron was in Egypt's land...

- Oh, and while we're on the school topic - no way is Wahlberg that cool with his students, and no class is that well-trained. On top of that, half the kids they cast as extras are too YOUNG to be high school kids (the opposite of the usual 30-year-old teenager I suppose)

So once the "Happening" begins, Wahlberg, his wife, friend Leguizamo, and Leguizamo's daughter hook up and try to outrun it. Which brings me to my next bunch of flaws:

- John Leguizamo - I love the guy, seriously, but I can't stop thinking him of the clown from Spawn, and he really just doesn't pull off a believable daddy here. I mean seriously, your wife is in peril, fine, so you just leave your child in the middle of shit? Fuck the bitch, save your kid! Instead, he runs off to try and save his missing wife. Exit Leguizamo.

- My pet peeve - the convenient expository character. Need your plot explained? Just throw in a guy who happens to know everything about plants! And is weird, that way you can pass it off as
artistic/cool/creepy/zany/good writing!

So at this point in the film, the trees and their cohorts the evil bushes and shrubs are targeting smaller and smaller groups of humans. Trees, plants, whatever. Wahlberg just freaked out over a potted plastic tree. And then we meet another ludicrously convenient character:

The crazy old lady who lives on her own (not in a shoe) and has been immune as a result since the plants have focused on targeting groups.

That's right, the plants are going for mass casualties!

Oh look, she's already nuts! Oh, our group of survivors has brought death upon her! Oh noes!

Look, this is a seriously interesting concept. I don't fault Wahlberg or any of the actors despite my complaint about Leguizamo, but that's more my issue. Shyamalan needs to get back to basics though. Quit trying for funky concepts. Do something flat out scary.

And if you're going to do a "nature attacks" theme - don't have the heroes running from a summer breeze that may or may not be carrying some kind of spore that might kill large groups of humans - but somehow the trees control this breeze, and smaller groups and individuals are relatively safe.

Yes, it's fucking grass. You know, come to think of it - if the events of this movie were to take place, this site would be fucked... just saying...

Overall rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5)

The Illusionist (2006)

2009-06-04T11:14:00.013-04:00

Release Date: 2006
Director: Neil Burger
Starring: Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel
Tagline: "Nothing is what it seems"
Random Trivia: Jessica Biel took over from Liv Tyler as the female lead after Tyler dropped out. Ed Norton preformed many of his own magic tricks, with the help of a magic coach. The role of the Crown Prince was loosely based on Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, who murdered his lover before taking his own life at a hunting lodge in 1889, and whose wife was barren due to a rumored infection of venereal disease - given to her by the Crown Prince himself. Royalty - gotta love 'em!

The Illusionist is the second Edward Norton vehicle we're tackling this month, and the better of the two by far. Of course, it's apples and oranges - or well, action and drama - but this is one of those roles that reminds you just why Norton was feted so much as he was coming up.

I had an awesomely incoherent set of notes for this flick that I scribbled down in marker while munching out on meat patties and corn flakes - yup, how's that for a combo - but I seem to have misplaced my pants. Erm, my notes. So we'll see how my murky memory does with this one.

The plot is pretty simple: Forbidden love between Norton's Eisenheim and Biel's Sophie is dashed in their childhood days; she's royalty, he's a commoner. From there, as Paul Giamatti's Inspector Uhl tells us, Eisenheim vanished - but not before bestowing upon Sophie a special locket, and meeting a magician who would help shape his future. Or so we are led to believe. We see nothing of Eisenheim's middle years, only his return to Vienna at the turn of the century, where he begins performing the most masterful illusions the city has ever seen.

And, of course, no one fucking recognizes him.

Eisenheim's astonishing act attracts the attention of Giamatti's Chief Inspector, who informs the Crown Prince of the show. The Prince is an abusive tyrant who happens to enjoy picking apart magic, illusions, and is basically that lame kid in your grade school class with no damn imagination whatsoever who wants to spoil every magic trick he sees. You know that kid - he's the one who would yell out "it's in his pocket" or "there's a fake door" ad nauseam. He, of course, missed the whole point of the show - we know magic's fake, but it's still fucking cool, douchebag.

He also happens to be romantically tied to Sophie, a marriage to whom would, in conjunction with the Prince's plot to overthrow the Emperor, allow him to gain control of Hungary as well.

So we have our pompous if intelligent douchebag who doesn't get it, and our damsel in distress of sorts - or well, a damsel looking at an ugly marriage.

The Chief Inspector, on the other hand, DOES get it. He gets magic, and is a bit of an amateur at it himself. Eisenheim interests the intellectual in him - his illusions are extraordinary, his character gracious and seemingly beyond reproach. He's a guy who rakes in a fortune at the box office from the rich folks of Vienna then drops handfuls of coins into the outstretched hands of hungry street kids.

Giamatti nails this role. He plays the Chief Inspector as a simple man, the son of a butcher, who will never know what royalty is like, and always live on the edges of it, as he tells Eisenheim. What really shines through, however, is the Inspector's child-like glee. He loves to be amazed. Sure, he wants to know how tricks are done - but he still has that sense of wonder, of awe, of being so completely fooled and thrilled by a trick. He doesn't want to pull apart an illusion to prove it's fake, he just wants to know how something that awesome is pulled off. He's the type who would learn the secret behind it all - and never tell a soul.

If the Crown Prince is a skeptic Scully, Giamatti is an eager Mulder - he wants to believe. Eisenheim is so good, so perfect in his illusions that the Inspector is almost ready to believe that he really has power - and there's probably a part of him that would revel in that.

I'm going to stop here and point out that I love how much work this guy is getting now. Giamatti has range, and what he lacks in leading man looks (Norton has that covered) he makes up for with charisma. Shoot 'em Up? Hilarious! I cannot wait to see him in Bubba Nosferatu, no matter how pissed I am that The Chin isn't returning.

Now, back the the movie at hand. Eisenheim's illusions are amazing, and only hurt a little by being obviously CGI in some cases. They definitely kept my fried brain trying to puzzle out how they all came together.

Plotwise, well again, it's simple: Forbidden love. Sophie recognizes Eisenheim, although she doesn't let on. There's a secret meeting. Giamatti's Inspector of course finds out, and he's torn between his awe of Eisenheim and his duty to the Prince. Once the Crown Prince shuts Eisenheim down, after being unable to discredit him, things kick into high gear: The Illusionist wants Sophie to steal away with him, and that sort of shit never pans on in movies like these, does it? And of course that locket turns up again.

Excellent performances all around, a solid script, and enough twists deliver a solid outing, and the final thing I remember is Inspector Uhl applauding Eisenheim's ultimate illusion, elated that "magic" has once again won out, and more than happy to have been fooled.

Some quick final thoughts:

- Never promise a girl that you'll run away with her. It always ends badly.
- Don't give it away all at once girl - this comment brought to you by the pothead sitting next to me when Biel gives Norton a peck on the lips.
- I figured out much of the "Orange Trick" as it unfolded; only the butterflies eluded me.
- The butterflies, however, reminded me of a Stephen King short story, The Death of Jack Hamilton, in which John Dillenger shows his skill at lassoing flies. I must be fucked up.

Overall rating: 3/4 Baked (4 out of 5)

I Love You, Man (2009)

2009-06-03T13:32:00.026-04:00

Release Date: 2009

Director: John Hamburg
Starring: Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, J.K. Simmons, Andy Samberg
Tagline: "Are You Man Enough to Say It?"
Random Trivia: J.K. Simmons character Oswald was named after the HBO prison drama he previously starred in, the absolutely awesome "Oz." Rashida Jones is a Harvard grad.

I do not love you, man. And just who the fuck coined the term Bromance, and where do I line up to beat them with a sack of oranges?

I know HalfBaked is going to vehemently disagree with me, but I Love You, Man bored me to death, and that's saying something considering the comedy-friendly state I was in. The very comedy friendly state.

Look, it has its moments, including a crapload of Rush references which, as a Canuck, I appreciated - but there were far too many "lets make something so cringe-worthy and awkward that people will laugh" scenes. That's not comedy. I shouldn't laugh because something is awkward or embarrassing in a forced way. Comedy should be natural; laughter should be an instantaneous gut reaction.

I tend to lecture a lot in my reviews so I'm going to skip to the chase in this one:

Paul Rudd is Peter Klaven, real estate agent, engaged to marry the girl of his dreams and apparently either a huge loser or completely dedicated to his work, since he lacks a single male friend to serve as his best man. The obvious choice here would be his openly gay brother Robbie (Andy Samberg), who takes pride in hitting on straight guys working out at the gym where he works as a trainer. Robbie is the apple of his father's (J. K. Simmons) eye, because he still comes off as more manly than Peter - and he's also one of the only funny characters in the film.

Of course, if Peter went with this option, there would be no film. Instead, he opts to try a man-date with a guy who fingers him as gay, a disastrous night out with his brother-in-law, and finally, a random encounter with Sydney Fife (Jason Segel) - who showed up to Peter's open house for the free food. Sydney is the world's oldest boy, a Rush-loving, zany man-child that guys are supposed to identify with. About the only telling character moment comes when we see Sydney's other friends - who have all grown into married with children weekend warriors, leaving Sydney disconnected and alone.

Syd and Pete hit it off, and proceed to spend half the movie jamming out to Rush tunes (and at one point, seeing the band live - kudos for the cameo, gotta love Giddy Lee). Then the completely predictable plot kicks in: Sydney rubs Peter's fiancee Zooey (Rashida Jones) the wrong way, becomes an embarrassment, gives a horrible speech at a pre-wedding party, but turns up in time for the wedding with Zooey's blessing. And we all live happily ever after. Bleh.

The gags in this puppy are really hit and miss: Projectile vomiting, Sydney acting crazy, and his attempt to help out Peter's career by borrowing money off Pete and spending it on billboards promoting him as an over-the-top, zany real estate agent - the property moving version of Sydney himself basically. I probably laughed a half-dozen times in the movie at best.

There's also a side-plot with Peter trying to selling Lou "The Hulk" Ferrigno's mansion, notable because it's the second Fully Baked Review in a row where Ferrigno gets a mention.

I will say this: I Love You, Man was probably not helped by the fact that I saw the awesomeness that is Star Trek just before it. But that's about all I can say. Seriously, they should just make a movie about Robbie, because Samberg is actually fucking funny, and you could mess around a lot with the premise of him corrupting straight guys. Probably too contreversial and all, but at least it wouldn't be predictable.

Overall rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5)

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

2009-06-02T13:36:00.008-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: Louis Leterrier
Starring: Edward Norton, William Hurt, Tim Roth, Liv Tyler
Tagline: "You'll like him when he's angry."
Random Trivia: Louis Leterrier was responsible for one of the most disappointing sequels in my short lifetime, Transporter 2. Both the Hulk, the voice of the animated Hulk, and the actor who played Bruce Banner (in the show, Hulk and Banner were portrayed by separate actors) appear in the movie.

Never mind the tagline. You wouldn't like Edward Norton when he's angry, so long as he's got some impressive CGI backing him up. Calm, it could go either way. In any case, he's not a particularly intimidating guy.

The first thing I want to say about 2008's The Incredible Hulk (billed as a reboot, although most of the movie takes place as Bruce Banner tries to cure himself of the gamma radiation and mutation that makes him the Hulk): Yes, the Hulk says "Hulk Smash".

In a quick comparison, The Incredible Hulk is a better movie than Ang Lee's more subdued version from a few years back, if taken on action movie terms. While there's no Nick Nolte or Jennifer Connelly, Edward Norton lends some star power (more than Eric Bana anyway), the effects are much better, and the action is top-notch. Add in a last minute cameo by Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark, and the movie almost redeems the big green lug.

Almost.

Lee's big-screen Hulk was one of the few superhero movies to put me to sleep. Literally. Fucking snoring. There were witnesses. Now, don't get me wrong - I'm all for what Lee was trying to do. Serious drama, detailed back story. It just ... didn't come together. Not a horrible shot but just not all there.

Marvel, not one to let the property die given their plans for an Avengers movie, needed fresh blood.

Which brings us back to Norton and the lack of physicality he brings to the role. Yes, I get that Bruce Banner is not meant to be ripped to begin with. The Hulk is a separate beast. And the film has plenty of edge of your seat action; no faults there. I just never bought Norton as the Hulk, and at times I even had trouble seeing him as Banner. The guy is one of the best actors of his generation, and I have no doubt he was passionate about the project, but physically, he's not up to the roll. I spent much of the movie envisioning his Fight Club character, wimpy and rather spineless, even in the intense training scenes at the opening of the movie as Banner tries to control his dark side.

Norton *is* capable of playing tough - see the opening scenes of American History X - but he's too soft here. Sigh. I hate to say this - he and I are done professionally - but this is a role for a Christian Bale-type actor, someone we can buy as fighting to control the beast inside.

With Norton, I'm shocked the Hulk didn't rip right out of him. Regulating his breathing, practicing restraint, various meditation techniques - I really wasn't buying Banner's triumph in this regard. And of course, it's all just a set up for when he inevitably fails later in the film and the Hulk breaks loose.

Moving forward, The Incredible Hulk also suffers from an overabundance of romantic interludes between Norton's Banner and Liv Tyler's Betty Ross. My internal monologue, which never seems to shut the hell up, was yelling "boring" at this part of the film. Being lightly baked does not provoke any desire to see romance on my part. It's no fault of the actors - Tyler has actually come a long way as an actress, and while sometimes heavy on the sap, makes a convincing love interest, soothing the savage beast. These scenes, however, seem almost thrown in as an afterthought, and serve only to slow the pace of the film. Screen vet William Hurt, meanwhile, spends far too much time hamming it up as the General in charge of reigning in Banner and, later, Abomination.

Here's where the flick gets things right this time out, however - the aforementioned Abomination. Every superhero needs a super-villain - M. Night Shyamalan got that right in Unbreakable. Abomination, as played by Tim Roth, starts out as a veteran soldier, the kind of guy who fights not just because he's good at it, but because he's come to like it. It's what he is.

Come to think of it (although at this point, my thought process has become quiet muddled), he essentially says this to Hurt's General Ross, shortly before signing up for a Hulkinization program that sees his own body juiced up into that of a super-soldier. When going up against the Hulk the second time out ends in a squashin' even with the added juicing, he goes back for round three with a mix of procedures that mutates him beyond what the Hulk becomes, into the monstrosity that is Abomination.

You have to love the "uh guys? maybe we should think about this" look on Roth's face for this procedure...

While not the brightest of foes - this is basically smash meets crush - it invokes a breath-taking climatic battle between the two behemoths that makes up for most of the film's earlier shortcomings, and the fact that it dresses up Ti-Cats territory as New York (that's Hamilton, Ontario for those not stuck there).

So some quick final notes from my now completely hazy brain:

- The shameless plug for Norton 360 was shameless. Fuck you Symantec.
- Why even have actual product placements then use the usual fake-ass GUI for all the top-secret military software? Try to be convincing guys...
- We've seen this intro. Again, and again, and again. Fincher did it in Fight Club. Raimi did it in Spider-Man. Stop with the overkill already!
- Hulk Smash
- Liv Tyler Hot
- Lou Ferrigno (the big green guy on the old TV show) shows up in a cameo as a security guard bribed by Bruce Banner, with a pizza. You've got to wonder - is that actually what Ferrigno was paid for making the appearance? Then again, he got work in I Love You Man...
- he also does Hulk's voice here
- and his arms are gross

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

From Dusk til Dawn (1996)

2009-06-01T00:54:00.006-04:00

Release Date: 1996
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Starring: George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Salma Hayek, Juliette Lewis
Tagline: "One night is all that stands between them and freedom. But it's going to be a hell of a night."
Random Trivia: Quentin Tarantino adapted the screenplay and co-starred. An alternate tagline for the film - "Vampires. No Interviews." - takes a shot at Anne Rice's vampire staple. George Clooney actually starred in two shows called ER.

Just what the fuck is From Dusk til Dawn, really? It shifts from a gritty heist gone wrong action/cons on the run flick to a fucked up B-horror seamlessly, moving from one to the other in a heartbeat. That's why I loved it way back when, at first glance (and missing half the damn movie at the time). That's why it's awesome now. It's batshit crazy. That's probably the best description I can come up with:

Batshit. Crazy.

Cast - George Clooney. Salma Hayek. Quentin Tarantino. Cheech Marin. Harvey Keitel. Juliette Lewis. Danny Trejo. And Tom Savini?!? Yeah, the effects make-up guy is a biker with a cock-pistol and a whip.

Weird undertones? We have them.

Superb cast, so lets look at the story.

Dusk starts out with the Gecko brothers, two cons on the run. Seems there was a good ol' jailbreak, with the younger, dimmer of the two cons, Tarantino's Richard, busting big brother Seth (Clooney) out of the joint. What follows is a botched hold-up that sets a gruesome tone. Blood and immolation. Shortly after, Richard takes it upon himself to rape and kill the pair's lone hostage. It seems Richard has some intimacy problems; well don't we all - but this leaves the brothers Gecko in need of a ride and a new hostage.

Enter the Fuller family: father Jacob, a minister played with subdued confidence by Keitel, daughter Kate, played by Juliette Lewis, and son Scott, a Chinese American adoptee.

Where were we? Oh, right. Story. With Seth keeping nutjob little brother Richard on a short leash, the five - two wanted men, three hostages - head south for the border. Mexico. Is there any jam running there can't get you out of?

Baked reviewer's note: Tarantino should really stay behind the camera - his cheese acting makes the kid playing Scott Fuller, Keitel's on-screen son, look talented. That, by the way, is Ernest Liu, who was never in anything of note ever again, unless you consider Married... with Children clone Unhappily Ever After notable.

Down south, the brother's are set to meet some criminal associate of theirs, because if there's anyone you can trust, it's some guy who wants to meet at some bar in some town you've never heard of in Mexico. That screams security to me!

On the plus side, the bar in question is called Titty Twister. So you know I'd probably go. Although Cheech Marin's claim of having every type of pussy available to patrons doesn't help much - I mean really. Smelly pussy? Horse pussy?

There are some roads even I won't go down.

In the club, the movie takes off. This is where we shift gears from cons on the road to fucked up B-Movie, thanks to the use of gratuitous nudity and violence (my favorite combo!) - girls dancing on tables, random bar fights that no one blinks an eye at, weapons-based pissing contests, etc.

And then the big reveal: House special Salma Hayek goes from hottest strip tease ever to ugly-ass reptile bitch in seconds. Fuck! How is that even a vampire?

In any case, she looks pure fucking ugly; a three legged dog on viagara wouldn't hit that.

You may notice that the majority of the photos accompanying this review are of Salma in hot striptease mode - are you fucking complaining?

Soon after Hayek's chowing down on Richard - can Tarantino never act again please? - the rest of the vampires show up. Seems most of the staff and regulars of Titty Twister, including Danny Trejo and Cheech Marin, are undead. The other creatures at least look like vampires; instead of Hayek who looks like one of the aliens from V.

The film becomes a last stand, with Seth, Jacob, Scott, and Kate forced to fight together, along with a couple of the Titty Twister's other surviving patrons (Savini included). Who lives? Who dies? Who fucking cares??? This is sheer carnage and gore, B-movie violence and titties at their best. If this rampage had been sustained for the entire film, we'd be looking at a fully baked flick! As it stands it's an awesome movie to watch while partaking in a little... something...

Weapons check: crossbow. Super-soaker with holy water. Shotgun made into a cross. Jackhammer with a wooden stake on the end of it (this is a fucked up kind of cool, but it really looks like a giant dildo a la Frank Drebin's sex shop find in the second Naked Gun movie).

Cue the last stand. And the end of my review. Go watch the fucking thing.

Random thoughts:

- How many roles does Cheech play? Dave is not fucking here, man!
- Hayek looks a bit awkward doing that striptease, but damn if she isn't smoking!
- I laughed my ass off during the carnage

Of the films I've reviewed thus far - this would be the best to get baked to.

One more for the road:

Overall rating: 3/4 Baked (4 out of 5)

Guest Review: Drag Me to Hell (2009)

2009-05-31T11:04:00.013-04:00

Release Date: 2009
Director: Sam Raimi
Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Dileep Rao
Tagline: "Christine Brown has a good job, a great boyfriend, and a bright future. But in three days, she's going to hell."
Random Trivia: Both Bruce Campbell and Ellen Page (Juno) had to skip the project due to scheduling issues. In Page's case, it was the lead role.

Horror. Where the fuck did it go?

Horror is a genre at war with itself currently. There are two camps in this battle: Gore Porn (Saw, Hostel, and their clones), and remakes (Friday the 13th, Halloween, and the forthcoming Nightmare on Elm Street).

Neither side has a particularly spectacular argument for their approach at the moment. While a few of them were decent - I have a soft spot for Jason Voorhees, as well as most of the Saw movies - the majority of them are utter dreck. My Bloody Valentine 3D? The entire film had a single cool scene (if you saw it, you know it - the pick-axe through the head with the eyeball stuck to the end of it).

Most of the movies coming out of horror-ville of late have been warmed over dreck with weak scripts, weak thrills and chills, and weak acting. When it comes to horror, weak acting and an iffy script are almost expected, but that's where a solid story and some serious scares come in. If you don't have those, you're dead in the water.

What the genre has really been lacking of late has been a serious, original scary movie. Something not based on a film from ten or twenty years ago. Something that's not just a series of gruesome scenes with little or no reason to exist. Something not self-referential, not striving for humour (if it happens, fine, but don't force it). Something not concerned with Scream, Saw, or college-aged kids in Abercrombie & Fitch outfits driving SUVs to abandoned houses or summer camps.

So lets look at what a compelling horror flick needs:

- Scares. The jump in your seat, bite your nails, or turn your stomach kind. Best if you can manage all three.
- A menace. Jason. Michael Myers. Freddy Krueger. Leatherface. The fucking critters were scary little furballs. CHUCKY, JACK!
- A story. And note, this is not the same as a solid script. We expect lame dialogue and for the brain dead camp counselors to split up at the worst time and run straight into the killer/monster, but at least give us a reason for the movie to exist!
- Gore that isn't just broken bones and blood. Go for the pus, the slime, the mutation! Give us monsters and things that go bump in the night again!

Drag Me to Hell takes note of all this, and cashes in in every category, whilst being a surprisingly well-acted outing. Why?

Because it's Sam Fucking Raimi. Doing something very cool here - along with a script co-written by brother Ivan, getting back to his horror roots.

Army of Darkness may have been more fantasy than horror at points, but there is no denying it as the pinnacle of all that is awesome. Going back a bit further, Evil Dead, and sequel/remake Evil Dead 2 are really cabin in the woods style horror flicks, traditional and to the point for the most part.

Drag Me to Hell is very similar.

Simple story: Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is a loan officer for a small bank. She's looking for a promotion, something to get her ahead in the field - and the assistant manager chair across from her desk sits empty, beckoning her. For her manager (veteran character actor David Paymer), it's a toss up between her, and new kid at the bank Stu, played by Reggie Lee. Stu's the type of slick office go-getter that's easy to hate: greasing the palms with basketball tickets, sucking up, and digging at co-workers in all the right places. The type of guy who would overhear the boss asking you to pick him up a sub, and place an order right along side him like you were HIS lackey as well. Then bitch that you got his order wrong to boot.

This does not sit well with Christine, but she's too reserved to do much about it. Still, she needs to get noticed, take the lead, and to do that, she needs to show some backbone. She is, after all, the quiet farm girl, working her way on up - much to her own embarrassment, and the annoyance of her boyfriend's upper class mother. Clay, said boyfriend, played by Justin Long, has got to be the youngest professor I've ever seen, and the most useless male "lead" in a film in a long time. [HalfBaked's Note - I actually liked Justin Long's performance, he did well with the role]

That's not too big an issue, however. This is a film about the girls; Lohman's Christine, and an old gypsy lady played by relative unknown Lorna Raver, who is in desperate need of a mortgage extension. Looking to show that she can make tough decisions, Christine turns down her application - a grave mistake that ends in the crazy old bitch attacking her in the bank's parking garage, and cursing her with the Lamia, a demon that will torment her from the shadows for three days before dragging her soul down to hell - literally.

My buzz is in full swing as the story unfolds. With no notes to go on, I'm relying on a very foggy memory to get me through this review. Here's what's in store:

A ton of fucking jump scares! Lurched from my seat at least a half-dozen times. That's no small feat. [HB- "Wuss"] I sometimes consider jump scares - where there's no pay-off, i.e. fast cut to a creepy looking coat rack - a cheat, but here, they're used effectively, and many that look like cheats turn out to be anything but. Case in point - ooh, it's a scary fucking handkerchief. Until it IS a scary fucking handkerchief and floats up to your face then tries to fucking smother you.

And how many times did the old gypsy lady hoark or honk into that snotrag anyway? [HB- "I counted 5 I think"]

Gross. There's plenty of gross-out here as well. Stephen King once said that if you can't terrify them, go for the gross out. Sam Raimi must have been listening. Mucus, pus, bugs, worms, and fuck - embalming fluid flooding out of a corpse into the open mouth of Miss Brown. How much goo does this bitch swallow in this movie?!? [HB- She does take a lot of money shots, but I don't know how much she actually swallowed. No one ever swallows...]

As an added bonus, there's a goat. A fucking goat, and it is all that is amazing for WTF moments whilst watching a film baked. It's brought in during a seance that goes horribly wrong, one of the few horror movie cliches that Raimi hits in Drag Me to Hell, but the goat makes everything forgivable. EVERYTHING.

The movie does have its faults - if I never hear anyone say "I don't know what to believe anymore," it'll be too soon, and Justin Long really only has one gear, and it's annoying. The ending also forces you to accept that Christine, who for the entire flick has been intelligent if naive, will go full-retard at the last minute and begin acting like a rash action movie chick.

There's also a bit of a message going on in Drag Me to Hell, what with the financial crisis, recession, housing collapse in the U.S., and how unjust the system really is - but Raimi wisely keeps the preaching to a minimum, and focuses on the scares.

Minor quibbles aside, Drag Me to Hell is a return to real fucking horror. With a PG-13 rating at that.

*Hey Guys, HalfBaked here too. I saw this with Lightly in theatres so I added in some comments if I felt like it...and my overall would actually be a 5 out of 5 because of the fact it's a Horror Movie that was done well, which is hard to come by now-a-days. (and props for doing it with PG-13!)

Overall rating: 3/4 Baked (4 out of 5)

Guest Review: Star Trek (2009)

2009-05-30T09:53:00.015-04:00

Release Date: 2009
Director: J.J. Abrams
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Bana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Karl Urban
Tagline: "The Future Begins"
Random Trivia: Abrams was not a Star Trek fan growing up. Gene Roddenberry first floated the idea of a Star Trek prequel in 1968. Talk picked up again in the late 80s/early 90s, and a script titled Starfleet Academy made the rounds for a while. Yelchin has now played both a young Chekov and a young Kyle Reese in Terminator: Salvation. Joshua Jackson, of Dawson's Creek/Fringe fame, auditioned for Kirk. I don't wanna wait... for this Romulan attack, to be over...

Better late than never. Yes, it came out a few weeks ago, but here's a belated Star Trek review. See, I lack plot devices like time travel when it comes to getting shit done. Damn it!

Mild spoilers ahead.

My review in one word: MegaFuckin'HolyAwesomeBatman [HB- Batman is awesome, and so is this movie.]

I didn't say it would be a real word.

Where to start with this... when J.J. Abrams was tapped to helm a Star Trek reboot, I was curious. The guy has serious chops - I need to catch up with it, but Lost has definitely caught my interest. Random people I meet seem to constantly recommend Fringe. Seriously, they walk up to me off the street and say "Hey buddy... watch Fringe." It's creepy. I enjoyed Cloverfield, shaky-cam and all, for what it was - a big monster movie that was all kinds of brain dead fun.

So you had me interested. Abrams has written, directed, or produced some pretty solid material over the last few years - and then he happened to mention that he wasn't a Star Trek fan.

Curious.

Here's the thing - I'm not really a Star Trek fan either. I was too young for the original series, although I did see the sixth movie during its original theatrical run (and thought it was a pretty decent flick given I'd only seen a handful of the original series episodes, and The Voyage Home on VHS).

When The Next Generation was at its peak, everyone around me seemed to love it, and I did jump on the bandwagon for a while. Q, the Borg, the Romulans, a solid cast, Data's quest to understand humanity and how exactly he fit into the universe... thematically, this is probably one of the deepest Sci-Fi shows to this day. And the pinnacle of the franchise, quality wise. Argue all you like over which is better, ToS or TNG, but The Next Generation was able to do much, much more given modern technology, a bigger budget, and more time on the air.

On the silver screen, Generations bridged the two series quite well, and was followed up by First Contact, which brought back The Borg. After that, it was downhill for the next two Next Generation movies, and the small screen series that followed suffered from Department of Redundancy Department syndrome - too many episodes covering the same themes. Deep Space Nine had its moments but was often overshadowed by Babylon 5, and eventually, even the writers came to realize that the space station setting was too restrictive, adding in the Defiant. Voyager became yawn-worthy, and Enterprise just didn't spark much interest.

The franchise wasn't dead in the water, but it needed to either disappear for a while, or at least get a drastic face lift. A non-fan would be just the person to trigger that.

Cue the Abrams. Using a time travel plot device to create an alternate time-line for the original series Enterprise crew, and assembling a superb cast, Abrams has pulled off one of if not the best series reboot in ages.

Casting is spot on. This has been said in review after review, but close your eyes: Karl Urban has clearly done his homework. He goes above and beyond with his portrayal of country doctor in space Bones McCoy, taking over from Deforest Kelly.

Heroes bad-guy Zach Quinto looks, if not sounds, like Leonard Nimoy, and he really had the most difficult task here: Original Spock Leonard Nimoy is in the film, playing what has come to be called Spock Prime - Spock as he exists in the "future" of the original series time-line. Advanced in years, but still working to solve all sorts of Federation and Vulcan issues, logically.

Spock is the catalyst for this film, and his inclusion triggers all of the events to come. Or the events of the past. However you want to view it, his failure to save the Romulans in their time of need triggers Eric Bana's Nero to head back in time to destroy Spock, attacking the wrong ship too early in history and creating an alternate future that allows Abrams to do as he pleases without concern to cannon while appeasing die-hard Trekkies (or most of them at least).

Long story short: Nero shows up and wants to wipe out Spock, old Spock (Spock Prime) goes back as well. Nero arrives a tad early and attacks the Kelvin while the ship is under the command of Kirk Sr. and the eventual commander of the Enterprise, Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), who later on becomes a mentor for Chris Pine's James T. Kirk. Without giving too much away, history is altered, and Kirk reluctantly - more to show off than anything - signs up for Starfleet Academy. See what they did there?

Urban's McCoy befriends Kirk early on, while Spock sees only a hotshot in Kirk, and takes some convincing by Spock Prime that their is, indeed, grounds for a friendship.

How Kirk comes to sit in the Captain's Chair of NCC-1701, and how Spock becomes his first mate, is covered along the way. All the major players are introduced, and each gets a chance to display their respective trademarks - Bones' country drawl, Chekov's accent troubles, Kirk's passion for the extra-terrestrial ladies, Spock's internal and external conflict as a half-human, half-vulcan - with a mother played by Wynonna Ryder?!? I must be high... oh wait...

Effects wise, prepare to be floored. Paramount spared no expense and Abrams got the most out of what he had to work with. Since this is, after all, a sci-fi summer blockbuster I can gladly report that the effects don't rip you out of the movie for a change.

Lightly Baked Observations:

- Sulu signs up for an away mission because he has some combat/weapons experience... fencing! wtf? Except that... John "Where the Fuck Is Kumar?" Cho pulls some bad-ass shit with a blade that actually makes this joke pay off
- Pegg's Scotty is hilarious, although introduced late in the film... keep your eye open for tribbles! I didn't catch them til they were pointed out to me later.
- Yelchin was actually better in Terminator: Salvation - his Kyle Reese impression is pretty impressive, no pun intended, but his Chekov isn't bad either
- the red shirt is a tool! and yes, he bites the dust on the away mission

Screw you, red shirt. You're just fodder anyway.

The only downside - the green alien chick Kirk beds down could have been hotter. [HB- And could have been much less clothed.]

Final thoughts: With the creation of an alternate time-line, Abrams can do just about anything with sequels. If he's got some balls - and it seems like he does - he could pull off some pretty awesome shit. Bring about contact with the Borg early. Kill off a major character. Bring in Seven of Nine and the hot Vulcan chick from Enterprise... bow chicka-wow-wow...

Anything is possible in the final frontier. Well maybe not that last one, unfortunately...

Overall rating: Fully Baked (5 out of 5)

Guest Review: Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control

2009-05-29T09:34:00.006-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: Gil Junger
Starring: Masi Oka, Nate Torrence, Jayma Mays, Larry Miller
Tagline: "Loved Get Smart? Get more!"
Random Trivia: Masi Oka worked as a digital effects artist for ILM on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones, and Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith

Lightly Baked here with a film so obscure many of you were probably unaware of its existence: Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control.

If you're just tuning in, Bruce and Lloyd were the tech geeks playing Q to Steve Carrell's Maxwell Smart in the big screen revamp of Get Smart. Played by Heroes' Masi Oka and Studio 60 from the Sunset Strips's Nate Torrence, respectively, Bruce and Lloyd are essentially the asian geek and the fat nerd. Dweebish to the point of awkward humour, designed to be nearly interchangeable stereotypes (frequent mix-ups between the two names - "No, he's Bruce" - being a running gag throughout the film), the duo actually generate more laughs per minute than their big-screen source film. Of course, in comparison to that particular snorefest, that's no great feat.

I'm a few bong hits past baked for this one. We start out with a cheese B-movie intro of windy jungle dark at night and creepy music that looks more like an episode of Buffy than a straight-to-DVD spin-off of a major release. Think "It was a dark and stormy night" style cheese. As we peel past the jungle we find ourselves in a house as a group of soldiers looking like UN rejects bursts in. Their leader, whose name I neither pick up nor care about, takes the owner - we're told he's a scientist - hostage, forcing the poor doctor to work for him. Obviously, this scientist is the unwilling brains of some greater scheme. How do we know? Well, lead baddy tells his men "Not the brain" as they're about to beat him. How's that for dialogue?

Not a solid start, but there's a few options at this point: Complete cheese B-Movie, complete failure (I actually like cheese B-movies so this has its own option), or semi-decent spin-off.

Surprisingly, this goes the route of the latter. Again, this is not a glowing recommendation - Get Smart itself sucked. Still, there's a phone booth gag early on that sees Bruce and Lloyd stuck in the elevator from Control's underground lair that actually worked better than most of the gags in Get Smart, including the miniature crossbow in the airplane bathroom bit. It also makes one wonder why phone booth doors open inwards.

Oka is so geeky that he's actually hard to watch early on, but by the time he gets the girl - a forensics expert who constantly smells of rotting flesh - we've actually grown fond of him. Which is another sad little tidbit - Bruce and Lloyd are given more character growth in this flick that Maxwell Smart is in the main film.

Speaking of his forensics expert girlfriend, she has a few scene stealing moments - dropping her cell phone in a cadaver during an autopsy, and "I work with dead bodies - sometimes I need to unwind." Maybe these come off as slightly more humorous when you're high. They did for me.

The supporting cast in this spin-off, however, well... acting wise - ouch. Definitely lacking the budget of Get Smart (obviously), there's really no notable appearances other than a few moments with Patrick Warburton, and a quick scene with Anne Hathaway. Oh, and Larry Miller as both a Control Chief and CIA bigwig. Meh. Dual roles are overdone. Torrence and Oka fair pretty well however, and their likability as geeks actually carries the movie pretty far. As a bonus, their awkward social skills come off as relatively genuine (most likely because, well, they are).

Now, back to Bruce and Lloyd. One of the rather cool feats of this film is that it runs concurrent to the events of Get Smart - meaning that B and L, as I'm going to call them this one time, are having their own little adventure while 86 and 99 are fighting off the forces of Kaos and a homo-erotic Dwayne Johnson.

Story-wise, Out of Control centers around the theft of tech geek's Bruce and Lloyd's penultimate invention, an invisibility blanket. Think of the cool elvish cloak Frodo and Sam used in Lord of the Rings, with military applications. Control wants it. The CIA wants it. And apparently, rogue governments and the agents of Kaos want it as well.

Along the way, Lloyd is given a love interest who's a spy herself. And way, way out of his league (see how that's funny? Fat guy and hot chick? We call that Peter Griffin syndrome. Or Homer Simpson-itis. For reference, see Gleason, Jackie). A couple of CIA agents make humorous (not really) foils, and a few CIA loving torture jokes are thrown into the mix - "We're the CIA. When we do something, that makes it ethical."

Actually, I rather liked that last line.

So here's where we are at halftime: Bruce got his girl thanks to Lloyd inventing a spray that masks her eau du rotting flesh smell. Lloyd has a hard-on for a super hot foreign girl - who may be a spy herself, and might just be to blame for the missing invisibility blanket. Lloyd has to practice pick-up skills on the snooty Control secretary (I didn't look but I'm pretty sure she's the same actress from Get Smart). Actually, Lloyd is pretty creepy during these scenes. Like, here's some candy little girl creepy.

Maybe that's just because my eyes are glazing over.

There's exploding labs, the geeks on a mission, and a couple of subtle reminders that the events of Get Smart are still unfolding, the most obvious being the aforementioned appearance of Anne Hathaway, bitching out Lloyd whilst thinking he's Bruce for giving Maxwell better toys than her.

And, suddenly, there's bananas. I can't explain that. You'll just have to see for yourself.

The only thing that really prevents me from recommending this flick on a rainy day is that you need to be somewhat familiar with the events of Get Smart to really pick up on every nuance. Making this a half-decent companion film to a movie that was an utter bore.

And, to be honest, this flick isn't that good - it's just good in comparison to Get Smart.

Still, if it comes down to it, or if you're just a Masi Oka or Nate Torrence fan - and I know there's literally tens of you - pick this one. At the very least, cast and crew seem to be having fun with it.

One last thought: There were boobs that jiggled. In a top, unfortunately.

Overall rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5)

Guest Review: Get Smart (2008)

2009-05-28T00:03:00.006-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: Peter Segal
Starring: Steve Carrell, Dwayne Johnson, Anne Hathaway
Tagline: "Saving The World. And Loving It."
Random Trivia: Get Smart aired on all four major networks - ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX - during the course of its original run, re-union movie (Get Smart Again), and 1995 continuation with Andy Dick added to the cast.

Disclaimer: I was lightly baked - no pun intended - for this flick. Perhaps, as a result, it impacted my enjoyment of the film, but I highly doubt it.

I should also mention that, by way of re-runs, I was a huge fan of this show as a kid. Phones in shoes. Phone booths that were secret entrances to underground lairs with one security door after another. The deadpan delivery of Don Adams. Maybe I was a really dry kid, but I loved it.

Thus, I went into this interested, yet scared. I fully suspected that this would be another Inspector Gadget, with hints of Austin Powers for good measure. Not in a good way, either. Sadly, I was right.

To keep things simple:

Get Smart is a movie neither smart nor funny. If that's all you need to know, you can pretty much skip the rest of this review. Otherwise, carry on.

Steve Carrell plays the role originated in the TV series (and carried on in the short-lived 1995 resurrection of the same name) by Don Adams, Agent 86, Maxwell Smart. Smart, in the series, was a lovable, bumbling buffoon, the kind you laughed at and cheered for at the same time. Serving for the super-secret spy agency Control, his job was to stave off the aptly named Kaos from achieving world domination, or something like that. At least, as a terrorist group, they had a decent name. Adams was perfect in the role, probably too perfect for Carrell's sake; no matter what he put into the performance, he was not going to top the original. That said, Carrell plays him as... Steve Carrell. I'm no Office fan, but I've seen enough of the show to know that The Office (U.S. Edition) is funny not just because of Carrell, but because it's an ensemble show. It's got a solid supporting cast, talented writers, and gags that work. With Get Smart, the ensemble is there, but the writing, sadly, is not, and most of the gags fall flat.

I liked Carrell enough in Bruce Almighty, but skipped Evan Almighty completely - bad word of mouth and all. I enjoyed his voice work as Horton in Horton Hears a Who quite a bit however. I'm certainly open to him as a leading man, and I suppose Mathew Broderick had already played Inspector Gadget, thus casting him in Get Smart would have been a bit of a retread. Carrell, however, just doesn't work. He's a one-trick pony here; completely flat. Adams was straight but never flat.

The supporting cast, as mentioned, is pretty stellar - Anne Hathaway as Agent 99, who most of us would like to see cast in a 69, plays a much sexier version than the Barbara Feldon original. That's about all I say can about her; I'm still getting over the "loves anal sex" rumor that turned out to be bogus. Ok, ok, in all seriousness, she does a fine job, and I'm still hopeful that she takes it in the ass.

Dwayne "When Will They Stop Calling Me The Rock" Johnson is Agent 23, Control's premier field agent, the big jock of the spy industry. The Rock always had charisma, and a ridiculous finishing move. He also has a pretty good sense of comedic timing, and I'll give him this - his man kiss with Carrell near the climax of the movie should probably have won the MTV movie awards Best Kiss category. Fuck you, Briana Evigan and Robert Hoffman. Alright so I have no idea who those people actually are. But I'll give this one to the Rock simply for having to lock lips with a guy as nerdy and unappealing as Steve Carrell. I suspect that experience alone would be enough for a gay guy to switch teams.

Beyond this trio, the cast actually gets better: Alan Arkin is the chief. James Caan is the President of the United States. Terry Crews (soon to be seen in the most insanely cast movie ever, The Expendables) plays another control agent, Agent 91. Terence Stamp is Kaos mastermind Siegfried (no Roy jokes to be found). Patrick Warburton (The Tick!) shows up. Masa Oki, of Heros fame, is a tech geek - I'll review the spin-off movie of his character, Bruce, later. And Bill Fucking Murray! is an agent stuck in a tree.

You heard me right. Bill Murray is stuck in a tree. This, actually, is the highlight of the film. I literally laughed enough at the concept alone that I missed half his lines the first time around. If someone had shown me a clip of this, either baked or stone cold sober, I would have assumed this was the best movie ever. Seriously. It bears repeating. Bill Murray is stuck in a tree!

This is also the downfall of the movie. The best segment of the entire film is a two minute clip of someone, not the lead, who is actually funny, placed in a situation that is actually funny. It's one of the few gags that works.

My high had already begun to wear off by the time I saw Carrell as Smart exit a plane with no parachute, to later be saved by Agent 99. I kept looking for Doctor Claw to appear, then remembered that this is Get Smart, not Inspector Gadget. I also kept my eyes peeled for Austin Powers, but he didn't show either.

What the fuck? Come back, Bill Murray!

It just keeps going downhill. Get Smart goes for the Big Twist, but there are no real twists in this movie. The "shocking revelation" - betrayal within Control - is pretty obvious from the start. That Smart will save the day is a no-brainer. As is the movie itself. All the good casting went down the tubes with a shabby script cashing in on the sudden popularity of Carrell. Oh, and for trivia buffs, The Rock is not the only wrestler in the movie. There's also Dalip Singh - The Great Khali - a 7'2 380lb giant who, while you can barely understand him, probably got more laughs out of me than anyone other than Bill Murrary and, actually, Masi Oki. Which is why I'm going to give his Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control spin-off a shot.

So I'll say it again: Get Smart is a movie neither smart nor funny. If you want to laugh at something, rent Zack and Miri Make a Porno, the original Austin Powers, watch old home movies of your family, or hell, dust off the tapes or find a re-run of the original Get Smart series.

Overall rating: Buzzed (1 out of 5)

Guest Review: The House Bunny (2008)

2009-05-27T15:17:00.016-04:00

Release Date: 2008
Director: Fred Wolf
Starring: Anna Faris, Emma Stone, Colin Hanks
Tagline: "They wanted a role model. They got a Playmate."
Random Trivia: Fred Wolf's only other directorial effort was Strange Wilderness, also released in 2008. My couch is comfy. Happiness is a Bong You Can Catch.

The House Bunny.

Lets be honest - this was not my selection. In fact, I doubt it's any guy's selection. Face it - if you want porn, you go on the net. Wank to that. Lame comedies with chicks in skimpy outfits (or lame dramas with chicks in skimpy outfits) are normally best-suited as straight-to-DVD fare appealing only to complete movie geeks and hornball thirteen-year-old boys.

So of course, this came by way of the ex-GF, technically her 15 year old sister - who, I should add, has given it a thumbs up. Was she right?We shall see.

Before taking even a single puff, or watching a single frame, I had the following condition: There had better be tits. Hot chicks, and tits. EPIC tits. The kind of tits you write home to mom about.

Wait. Back that up.

EPIC. TITS.

And for the first half, the movie delivered. No nudity, sure - and I bet half of you just stopped reading - but cleavage galore. Opening credits - hey, it's Happy Madison. At this point, I'm feeling a bit more happy myself. Could this actually be decent? Maybe not good, but decent?

As a bonus, I do like Anna Faris, a.k.a the chick from Scary Movie who took the mother of all cum shots.

Random character thoughts: She reads? Really? Well whatever. There was apparently some sort of character development at this point, but I was otherwise occupied, only to be dragged out of my happy stupor by the on-screen bartender's "special twist" that he claims to have added to the drinks. Ugh. There's some innuendo there I don't even want to consider.

My notes, at this point, are getting wavy. Apparently, I'm enjoying the booty shaking on screen, as my last comment states "Booty shaking- I like it already." For all my bitching about tits, I'm actually more into the A part of T&A.

At some point, the plot has regressed - erm, progressed, sorry - and our bouncy playboy bunny protagonist has been booted from the Playboy Mansion, and tens of readers out there are cursing the tongue twister I've just created. Seems the other girls don't want her to be Miss November. Who cares, you can all be Miss November. Oh, right, it's Playboy - so softcore I've been reading it since fifth grade and even then it was weak.

Dumped from the flashy digs, our Bunny - her name is Shelley, but I'll just call her Anna Faris, or our Bunny - hits the road, and stumbles upon a sorority house - apparently staffed/mentored by stuffy old broads who haven't had their gears greased in decades, and populated by your typical snooty sorority bitches. There must have been a type-casting call. Where the hell are the orgies and underaged drinking?!? This has got to be the lamest "hot sorority house" ever!

Too dumb and not bitchy enough to fit in with the rich crowd, the newly homeless Faris heads to the lamest sorority ever - Zeta house -missing the Z&E from its sign, giving us an almost laughable (thanks to me being baked at this point) "at least you still have T&A" line.Except they don't. Other than the obviously hittable, hot chick in ugly girl clothes and glasses lead sorority girl (Emma Stone from Superbad), there's not a looker in the bunch. You've got the stereotypical goth - holy shit it's Edward Furlong! Fuck, dude, Robert Patrick's been looking for your ass... and something that, at this point, is either a dude in drag or a very ugly girl - I'm really not sure. Plus some chick in a body brace, and random other characters...I think one qualifies as a midget. I'm going to lay it all out at this point. I'd fuck a midget. If you're offended by this, please exit to the upper right.

Plot at this point: save the sorority house by getting 30 new members.Playboy chick is going to be the house mother, and incest never sounded so good.

We move into the usual crap - they hold a car wash to raise money, and Emma Stone, instead of going all wet t-shirt for us, goes wet pants,and looks like something I have hidden away on my hard drive somewhere. Next up - Faris must polish the turds and teach them to behot. My initial exuberance at the hot opening has at this point wilted into a growing acceptance that, while the Faris character is actually a pretty decent satire on vapid blond stereotypes - by being an over-the-top vapid blond stereotype - this movie will suck hard in the second half. Pun fully intended, just not in a good way. How does someone with no car hold a car wash? Wait...they wash the cars. Riiigght. I may be higher than I thought.

Some secondary storyline about Faris hooking up with a random dweeb is boring the shit out of me. I guess it's supposed to add "layers" to the movie. Add layers? I want them off!!!

God that ugly chick... I can't get over.. .it's a MAN BABY! Kill it with fire!

At this point I'm going back into a stupor, but a less happy one.

Random thoughts:

I hate Karaoke.

Nipples of the face. "The eyes are the nipples of the face." This is an actual line from the movie. My actual thought that very moment -I'm supposed to look at the bitch's face???

Lets sum up the rest of the movie, shall we?

a) My dinner of Arby's was yummy, and two sandwiches for 5$ is awesome.

b) Dressing obviously cute girls up in ugly clothes and giving them glasses does not make them less cute.

c) Dressing a man up in girls clothes DOES make he/it/her hideously ugly and I still want to KILL IT WITH FIRE (or, as the girl next to me said - "thin the herd - kill the weak/ugly one of the pack." Although it looks like she could clobber me).

d) After the magic "ugly to hot" conversion, you know all will turnout well, and some moral message about always being yourself will play out.

Look, I'll level with you. At this point in the movie, I don't even care. She gets the guy they keep their sorority blah blah. If you rent this, watch the first half, then turn it off, doze off, or, in the likely case that you're with the girl who forced you to get this, just smile, pretend to watching, and hope you get head later.

Overall Rating: 1/4 Baked (2 out of 5)

Guest Review: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

2009-05-26T16:54:00.009-04:00

Release Date: 1991
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick
Tagline: "This time there are two."
Random Trivia: Edward Furlong went through puberty during the shoot. Seriously. His voice changed, and most of his lines had to be re-dubbed after filming was complete. Way to age kid. Hollywood - where 6 is the new 10.

Dadum dum dadum... Dadum dum dadum... Dadum- oh shit, I did that last time didn't I...

Lightly Baked back with my review of the second in the Terminator franchise, and third overall for the site, if my review of The House Bunny ever sees the light of day (that's right, I watched The House Bunny, big whoop, wanna fight about it?).

I gave T1 a solid 5 out of 5, so what does that mean for Terminator 2: Judgment Day? Are we adding a Twice Baked rating to the scale?

I'll put a disclaimer on this puppy: I love both these films, for different reasons. I'm not one of those reviewers who gets a happy hard-on for every movie they watch. I prefer an ending the makes me think next to nice big juicy explosions. Not that I mind big, juicy explosions... Damn, this is getting a bit suggestive. Anyhow, The Terminator, 1984 edition, was an awesome 80s "unstoppable killing machine" movie. It was simple: What the fuck do you do when a guy who just won't fucking die comes after you. Where do you run? Who believes you? Who helps you? How do you fight back?

Terminator 2 is a very different creature once you get past the unstoppable dude - this time Robert Patrick as a liquid metal shape-shifting terminator - angle. It tries to take the film up a notch to the "epic" level, with varying degrees of success (epic is fucking cliche, but forgive me - if there is any installment in the series thus far where this applies, it's T2). It's one of the rare sequels that a lot of people will argue was superior to the original. Yes, it has those big explosions, and was the summer blockbuster event flick of '91, but it has a story, a message, and a tagline far better than the one I tossed in for the intro of this review: There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

Or, more simply: No Fate.

It's a coming of age tale, a movie about friendship, family, and inevitable fate, and of cheating just that.

And it's got killer fucking robots.

So enough with this serious shit.

A little back story: Writing this review, I'm watching the Extreme Edition DVD (theatrical cut) with the ex again, but in reality - historically at least - I'm watching this in Ontario, Canada, in the summer of 1991. My best friend and I have been fucking stoked to see this puppy since we heard about it. I've got every inch of the trailer with Arnie coming down the assembly line committed to memory, never mind that the scene never appears in the movie. I'm a huge Guns N' Fuckin' Roses fan, and You Could Be Mine is one of the best soundtrack songs ever, with an awesome use of clips in the video to boot.

Opening day, we convince my buddy's dad to drive us to the theatre and foot the bill. He has no interest in the film because, well, he's not much of a movie buff, and if he was, he'd be into serious drama and arthouse films. But he's cool enough to take us to the show and drop us off. He even gives us cash for snacks.

And then the big FUCK YOU from some 20-something who's only joy in life is wiping the smile off children's faces: The movie is 14A. We're 13. NO ENTRY.

14A is a Canadian invention. It means if you're not 14, you need an adult with you. Sure, my buddy's dad is our guardian, and he bought us the tickets - but senor Douchebag insists that he buy a ticket as well, and babysit us for the entire movie. Which he has no desire to do.

You schmuck. Do you not remember being 13? You're not going to get arrested for letting us in, and you're not getting promoted for selling an extra ticket. I hope, sincerely, that you wound up with a horrible case of crabs later in life.

The movie hasn't even started yet and I'm already wishing someone dead.

Luckily, pop's cool enough to buy a ticket, sit through the previews, and leave after five minutes. So a HUGE thanks to my buddy's dad, over a decade late.

Back to the present.

My meal tonight is pasta with garlic toast. Milk. mmmm... something *cough cough* sorry, weed cough - is kicking in.

Now on with the show!

"This time there are two" means, of course, we've got an extra terminator. With Arnie playing good guy this time out, reprogrammed to protect juvie John Conner, it leaves Robert Patrick as the badass. As the story goes, he modeled his performance on Eagles/birds of prey. You can see it. I didn't appreciate the guy in anything else til his underrated performance on The X-Files years later (yeah, I'll go there - he was probably the only one trying in the last few seasons, so good on him). Regardless of his body of work, though, he OWNS this role. You buy that his T-1000 is way more deadly than the walking hunk of metal that is the T-800, and not just because of the cool liquid metal effects from ILM.

The character intros: near perfection. We get a cool bar scene (naked Arnie at Lady's Night) that sets up Arnie as the anti-hero with a bit of comedic timing. Patrick's T-1000 comes off as brutal. And Sarah Conner - we'll get to her in a bit.

But first - here's our future hero, John Connor - who is apparently a punk kid in this. His step parents are... actually, normal parents. Of course John thinks they're dicks, but seriously kid, Todd doesn't seem so bad. You could have wound up with some creepy old perv, so take what you can get. I suppose this is meant to make us see his rebellious side. Great. He's a rebel punk twerp. Because there's nothing you want to see more in the future defender of the human race than a hot-headed streak and some attitude.

This is one of the rare flaws I've found with characters in the flick. Most of them are spot on. Even the supporting cast. And to be fair, I like Edward Furlong's portrayl in the long run. It's not easy to work with kids in film; most of the time they come off as awkward, goofy, or trying too hard. Furlong is relatively natural. But our introduction to John is the only one that seems weak, after a string of awesome intros. We should have started off with him lifting cash from the ATM. Instead, we get a brat.

Speaking of lifting cash from an ATM (worst. segueway. ever.): John, it seems, has learned a few things from mom, including that you can brute force ATM's with a portable video game machine. Who knew?

Back to the character intros. I said they were awesome, nay? I said the only one I found a flaw with was Furlong's. Well, best for last (in this review; I'm not sure I have the order right chronologically). Is there anything more awesome - and I promise, this is the last fucking time I'll use that word - than watching Linda Hamilton do chin-ups behind bars? And, well, hot? Now Sarah - when we left her, Sarah Connor had been a trapped cat. Frightened, forced to fight back, and, at the very end of the first film, finally free and setting out on the road to... somewhere.

In the years between the films, Sarah has hardened. She's a survivor. She's battle ready. And, since she decided to get herself busted and blab about her visions of the future, she's institutionalized.

Way to let your gums flap.

In the end, though, she's badass. For reference, see Ripley, Ellen. Oddly enough, from another James Cameron movie. I'm seeing a trend... and your sarcasm meter just exploded.

The insane asylum setting also gives Cameron and co. the excuse to bring back Dr. Silverman - to much better effect here (and not nearly so contrived as in the third movie).

At this point, my notes are beginning to fail me. Here's what I have left:

We see the locked-down world that is Sarah's life. We see her struggling to keep up appearances, in the hope that, if she's deemed cured, she might see her son. We meet those around her, including one hell of a creepy perv of a guard, to which I wrote: Creepy guy is creepy. Him licking Sarah's face is even creepier. But as mentioned, she is kinda hot... prison sex, anyone? Ahh well. To think, today, this movie would be PG-13.

Woah, cat. At some point, there was a cat.

As Silverman begins playing Sarah videotapes of their past sessions, I can't help but think "Hello, Sarah. I want to play a game..."

My mind is a series of one-liners and movie taglines.

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things is not the same. We're at the arcade. John and his pal are pumping in quarters, and there's... girl gamers? In 1991? I think not. Those, my friends, are a modern invention, and the result of a gender-friendly casting director.

Pictured below is a clip from one of the most epic sequences in action/killer robot movie history. And of course, roses are much more effective than a geranium.

I realized something partway through the flick - there's some serious latent robot homosexuality going on here. It's Hobbit-like.

Ok, not really. And I'll defend Sam til my dying day!

Once Sarah is reunited with John, this becomes a buddy movie between a boy and his Terminator. A mother/son bonding movie between Sarah and John. And a race to destroy the company behind Skynet, Cyberdyne Systems.

We get the big reveal:

"Who sent you?"
"You did."

John sent the Terminator back. This is where the whole time travel thing starts to fuck with things. Would knowing the future not change your reaction to it?

There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

This is an awesome idea. In the context of the movie, it plays out perfectly, but good luck escaping from that fact that in preventing the future - i.e. putting off Judgment Day - John Connor is essentially wiping himself out of existence. If there is no Judgment Day, and if Skynet is destroyed, there are no Terminators sent back in time, thus Kyle Reese is never sent back in time (see T1), and hence, John no longer exists - nor does this movie.

On the other hand - the movie fucking rocks. So we'll overlook such things as logic. And give you this:

We, as the audience, should have known that the second John did not cease to exist, after the destruction of Cyberdyne Systems and the Terminators, that John and his mother had failed. Judgment Day was still nigh.

Fate, therefore, is inevitable. Or so it would seem.

My notes are no longer just failing me, they're outright gibberish.

There's some sort of reference to Pedobear. And apparently, I greatly enjoyed the chase scene on the freeway, the skewering of a guard by Robert Patrick's T-1000, and helmet hair on some hospital orderly.

This makes it three for three on reviews that go unfinished for me!

To sum it up: If you haven't seen this film, you should. Not least of all because T4 is due any day now, and it would help to know what the fuck is going on. It's on any action movie fan's list of must-watches. The liquid metal T-1000 was a turning point in special effects. The action is top-notch and, a few plot holes aside, the script is solid.

Scale, theme, everything is bigger. While I love the first film for being somewhat colder, and find T2 a bit too sentimental in the end, it still kicks major ass.

Lets just hope the future war in Salvation turns out half as good.

Overall rating: Fully Baked (5 out of 5) - I promise not to do this often.

Multi Micro Reviews - Video Games

2009-05-26T14:33:00.006-04:00

Hey everyone, first up...don't worry about the Terminator reviews as they are forthcoming.

In the meantime, we have myself writing a few mini-reviews of some video games.

Lets just jump on in.

Terminator: Salvation -
Platforms: Xbox 360, PC, PS3
Genre: Third Person Shooter

So Terminator Salvation the movie just came out and of course with all the buzz behind it they had to make a video game to boot. If you have even seen the previews of the new movie your first response after booting this up will be "Who the fuck am I and where is John Connor (Christian Bale)?" Yes, the first moment you start playing your helicopter gets shot down and someone yells something to Connor (who's the one falling out of the heli). At this point you see John Connor for the first time and just...wow....it looks bad...The games graphics are not worthy of a next-gen price tag. Or maybe if the game play is amazing then the graphics can be passable. Lets talk about the poor game play now, which has stiff controls and I had to adjust the sensitivity quite a bit before I could even play it properly. The game will get repetitive very quickly with the same mission after mission. You run into a room, some terminators or other robots come after you, kill them and move on to next room. The developers did break it up a tiny bit by throwing in missions where you man a turret on the back of a slow moving truck. With the stiff controls all this does is annoy as you try and aim at the flying robots attacking you.

Bottom Line: If you are a huge terminator fan give it a rental, but be prepared to repeat the same actions over and over with a fake John Connor who's shotgun is very accurate even from far away. If you are not a HUGE terminator fan then pass this one by, unless you are a achievement whore in which case a runthrough the game on the hardest difficulty will net you the full 1000, and even on easy you would get all but two achievements.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Uncaged Edition) -
Platforms: Xbox360, PC, PS3 (caged edition avail on Wii, PS2, PSP, DS)
Genre: Third Person Brawler (essentially ya that sounds right)

Another game based on a movie, and this movie was not any better than Terminator Salvation is. But does the game based off the movie barely make a scratch or does it claw the shit out of my senses? Lets talk about it. First off the game has the likeness of the characters from the movie (with a few minor exceptions) and pulls it all of beautifully. The voice-acting delivered by Hugh Jackman is great and sounded like he had some fun with it. The plot follows the origins story a little more faithfully and obviously more in depth than the movie. People playing the game will still end up getting the same story from the movie and actually the version they see is more complete! The Graphics are beautiful and personally it's fun as hell to see wolverine rip some guys arms off, or cut a guy in two, the amount of violence is actually a nice change from the movie which pandered to the Teen audience. Wolverine also takes real-time damage! Get a grenade in the chest, and yea...you can see through your damn body and you even get to see it regenerate. This is the way a movie game should be, wicked fun to just pickup and play.

Bottom Line: This is a great game, the graphics are good, voice acting good, plot is decent and it's easy to pick up and just play. The only downside is it gets repetitive fairly quick, and unless you feel like playing thru the game with other costumes or unlock bonus features then no reason to play through a second time. It can also be beaten in about 5- 10 hours so it's not the longest game either. GREAT FOR A STONER!!! ***HIGHLY RECOMMENDED***

X-Blades -
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Genre: Third Person Spectacle Fighter

I have to call X-Blades a Spectacle Fighter because it is like the Devil May Cry Series, you get in a battle that's just more or less really flashy and usually easy to fight off and perform crazy special moves that stun everyone viewing the screen. ANYWAY - this is the closest I could figure this game as it starts out with the oddest cut-scene in a shop in which you connect to tetris pieces together and then monsters come, your incredibly naked main character fights them off and then explains she's basically a tomb raider. Follow so far? good. At this point you are let loose in a temple and are headed to get some stupid rare jewel thing, as you run along suddenly lizard things start attacking you and tutorial time. But all it says is - Press X to attack. So you only have one melee attack which is X, after a while you find out you have guns too. Which can be used with the right trigger and now I feel like I'm playing Devil May Cry but with a hot very naked chick as the main character as shit is dying all over the place and I'm bouncing around shooting and attacking. The game itself is totally insane as you continue you run into a werewolf which takes like a hour to defeat but never really hurts you so it's just like hacking away at a tree with a axe. This is getting long, so lets skip to bottom line already.

Bottom Line: It's a extremely budget Devil May Cry, complete with ridiculous amounts of upgrades you can do to everything. This does feature a nearly naked chick bouncin around thou, and it can be fun at times. I would still recommend Devil May Cry 4 over this.

Dark Sector -
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Genre: Third Person Shooter/Action

Ok has anyone out there played Gears of War? Yes? Well then don't bother with this game, it's not that good. The game starts of decently enough with you infiltrating a base and more or less just killing a ton of guards who don't know how to actually hide behind cover as they will attempt to hide but manage to end up hiding while somehow still totally in view of me and my bullets. The AI is something to usually challenge the player, althou the only challnge here is do I use my pistol or my machine gun to kill the stupid guy standing there looking at me as if I can't see him. The only challenge I got during the first level (Prologe) was during the final battle between you and a helicopter which was only hard because other eniemies that were on the other side of the map would suddenly appear practically beside me and nearly kill me every so often. It was quite the confusing sight to see as a eneimy across the screen would suddenly dissapear infront of me and then suddenly end up beside me. Crazy. Well the controls arn't the best either and seem stiff at times I use the phrase at times because it was completly random.

Bottom Line: The game is certainly interesting enough if you could get into the plot. It unfortunatly suffers from glitches and stiff controls and AI that is non-exisitant at times. If you had to ask me for a recommendation then I'd say don't bother.

Wanted: Weapons Of Fate -
Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Genre: Third Person Shooter

Another movie and yet another game. The movie I found to be actually enjoyable and fun, at least up until there was a loom telling people who to kill, then I was annoyed. The game follows the same story from the movie essentially, but more the comic timeline and stories. So lets just say it involves an annoying voice Wesley (It's not the dude from the movie and the voice actor gets annoying FAST) and he goes around shooting tons of armed guys in his way. I will have to say, once you learn all the cool tricks like curving bullets and moving super crazy fast etc... then the game is really quite fun for a while. The developers actually manage to make things enjoyable to the point you are curving nearly every shot just to see if it will choose this shot as the one that uses the slow-everything-down-and-follow-the-bullet-to-it's-target camera which is a treat to view when stoned at least. Even with the fun of basically being a super-powered crazy agent the game as with most games gets repetative and seems drawn out as every few eneimes taken out equals a pointless cut-scene that usually just shows Wesley walking to the next room. Another game that attempts to break up the reperative sequences with a very sudden turret scene early on without any warning either, you basically turn a corner and are suddenly in this turrent and are expected to shoot all the bad dudes. Crazy shit.

Bottom Line: The game is actually fairly playable and with the exception of a few minor glitches and annoying choices with some repetative gameplay, it's actually a fun game that I would at least warrent with a rental. I like curving bullets for no reason, like around a pole even though I have a nice clear shot.

- That's it from HalfBaked for now, I might be back later with another review...but I dunno yet..

Coming Soon!

2009-05-18T10:56:00.003-04:00

Articles currently in the works or already half done.

- Terminator 2: Judgement Day (this will be a guest review as well) (hopefully will have this before Thursday and Terminator Salvation)
- Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (I will review this one myself)

I am hoping to make this week Terminator Week, I'll also try to review the new video game and I'll try and end the week off with a review of Terminator Salvation after I see it Thursday night (I won't have notes for that one so it will be a memory based review)

Also -

The House Bunny - Guest Review from Lightly Baked
Phone Booth - Double Review (me and Lightly Baked sat down and watched this one last night, expect either one review with both info, or two separate reviews) - haven't decided yet.

- X-men Origins: Wolverine (The videogame - not the movie)

hmmm, I don't remember if I had other things planned or not.

Oh well!

Enjoy the forth-coming reviews!

Guest Review: The Terminator (1984)

2009-05-15T20:19:00.020-04:00

Guest Reviewer - Lightly baked (friend of mine)

Release Date: 1984
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn
Tagline: "Your future is in his hands"
Random Trivia: Watching this film in my living room, high with the now-ex-GF. Terminator-vision shows a dump of the ROM assembly code for the Apple II operating system. You can recreate this if you have one (a Terminator or a AppleII).

Dadum dum dadum... Dadum dum dadum...

That tune has been with me since I was a kid. I have no fucking clue when or where I saw this flick for the first time. Not in theatres, possibly at home with the old man, who puts about as much faith in ratings-based-parenting as I do. This will be my first occasion seeing
it baked, fully or otherwise. It's also my first review for this site, so pat me on my back already!

Diving right in - I don't think I even need to describe story for this puppy. If you haven't seen it, you're not a movie fan. Holy shit! Something has come to me - this is the perfect time travel movie, as the 80s synth version of the theme takes you right back into the decade. Right up there with Back to the Future Part 2, which shows the future as only someone from the 80s could have imagined it. Anyhow - as good as this movie still is, Predator has held up better as far as aging is concerned. But fuck - it still rocks. Now the hair... Big hair. And cheese music. If it weren't for the movies, and a few late-breaking albums at the end of the decade, I've have this entire decade removed from my memory with a rusty ice pick.

Random thought: Sarah Connor's roommate for some reason reminds me of a backup girl from the 20 minute workout. Do you remember that show? Probably not.

Never mind. I dropped my Kraft Dinner in my Samosa. As you can tell, this review and coherency may not go hand in hand. Lets get back on track: Kyle Reese has arrived back in the 80s with the job of protecting Sarah Connor. Arnie is an evil Terminator, a killing
machine sent back in time by Skynet, a self-aware artificial intelligence which has overrun mankind after launching nuclear war. He's to kill Sarah Connor, mother of the future leader of the human resistance, John Connor. Edward Furlong is probably just a couple
years out of the womb, and Robert Patrick's liquid-metal T-1000 probably hasn't even been considered yet. Here we go. Sarah Connors are being picked off out of the phone book, one by one. That's quite ingenious actually, except for the fact that Skynet has developed a way to go back in time and couldn't fucking GOOGLE Sarah Connor's address from the 80s! I thought everything was online. 411 go the way of the dodo after Judgment Day? I guess so...

Ooh... shotgun. Unattended shotgun. Those always come in handy. Good snag Kyle, they obviously had Doom in your future time-line.

So let me get this straight - Kyle goes with the awesome shoulder-sling thingy for the gun... and NIKE FUCKING VELCRO??? Seriously just invent a way to travel through time with clothes, and avoid having to make awkward fashion choices/product placements such as this. Plus, you're less likely to fry your nuts.

The disco scene... is that a disco? Fucked if I know...

As baked as I am, the armor in the future scenes from The Terminator still looks like football pads to me. Kind of like the Road Warrior with some of the Great Humungus' minions (note to self: Review the Road Warrior). Still, the future scenes are awesome. Proof: we're still creaming our pants over a post-Judgment Day sequel in 2009.

The roommate is dead. Am I writing this in order? I remember really wanting that chick dead. I'm sorry Sarah, pick a roommate who is less fucking annoying. Fucking kill her, make it brutal, torture her mmkay thanks? And never, never shack up with anyone like that again. I guess it won't matter, since you wind up in a mental institution somewhere down the line, then dead from cancer in 1997, then on TV played by someone else in the year 1999 but airing a decade later.

Oh and while we're still on the roommate subject (or while I want to dwell on it):

Patty? Selma? Jub-Jub? She has a lizard for fuck's sake! If you have a lizard, you keep it in a tank, you don't let it wander around getting lizard shit everywhere.

Oeros... mmm, Oreos (clear-headed me's editorial note: Looking back at my notes, this is actually spelled Orea. Oreos were placed in front of me at this point. They were good).

Ahh, subtle foreshadowing. Someone is talking to a machine. Just like
later, when-

So apparently, when you cover your ear, the music playing in the background actually drops. Or so this movie would have us believe. This is apparently some sort of nefarious invention by Skynet.

Hello, Silverman. Doctor Silverman. I forgot he was in the first one,
I mostly remember him from T2, and as just about the only returning
actor other than Arnie in the not-as-horrible-as-you-think-it-is-but-still-could-have-been-so-much-more T3.

At this point I put down my notes and jumped back into the movie. Has there even been a coherent, finished review on this site yet? Will there ever be?

To summarize, The Terminator is a simple story of Boy Meets Girl, Girl
Almost Gets Killed by Time Traveling Cyborg, Boy Loves Girl, Boy Gets
Killed By Said Cyborg but not before Knocking Girl Up, Girl somehow
stops literal killing machine that military-badass boy couldn't.

And to top it all off, boy was sent back through time by his own, future, grown son.

Got it?

Good, because this is the easy one. The time-line doesn't really fuck
with your head until the sequels. Come to think of it, you don't even
need to be fully baked to ponder that shit and think "..."

Overall rating: Fully Baked (5 out of 5)

Cost of Living?

2009-05-13T02:37:00.002-04:00

Well I regret to say that the blog is essentially dead in the water.

Due to financial reasons I cannot continue to smoke marijuana, so either I have to rely on others to write for me, or I have to write as if I was in that state of mind.

I have a question for anyone who still actually reads this...

Would you like me to write some reviews based on things/reviews I may have been able to do previously?

Meaning - Things I have already played/done/seen while high?

Leave a comment...

Updates!

2009-04-20T20:22:00.002-04:00

Good evening.

I need to let everyone know what be goin on....

Ok - so - I am getting some assistance in writing some reviews, so I'm bringing on more staff.

So hopefully soon enough I can post some more crap as I am going to have a few days off soon, and all I have planned so far really isn't much. SO SOOOOOOON!!!

I also decided to start a twitter account, more or less as it should and most likely will end up to be quite a interesting read once I start texting it randomly and also making posts about shit going on here.

See you soon!

P.S - Linky to Twitter - https://twitter.com/Halfbaked84

Guitar Hero Metallica Review

2009-04-03T18:51:00.008-04:00

Game: Guitar Hero Metallica
Genre: Musical/Rhythm
Players: 1-4
Systems: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2

Story -
Yes, Story in a Guitar Hero game....is there really any point to it? No....there isn't which is why my story portion will be SHORT. Basic story is you play as part of a band who sees that Metallica is holding auditions for a opening act, and the first two people you have tryout to join your band are gay looking 80's styled pop-rock looking freaks. You tell them to buzz off and voila! you have just created your new rivals for the auditions and also the rest of the game, although you never battle them directly anyway. You get a decent band together and yer off, you pull up to the auditions to see the 80's dudes already there getting signed....what do you do? You hit them (or try to) with you van and pull up right in front of Metallica and then open the side door to your band rocking the fuck out! Metallica approves and you are in! That's about it for story, they try and battle you a couple more times but otherwise that's about it.

Sidenote - These cutscenes are in cartoon form, which was done by the Metalocalypse animation team. The scenes are really fun to watch if not anything else.

Design -
Quickly ask yourself one question: "Have I played Guitar Hero 3 or World Tour?" If you answer yes, then you don't have to read this portion...it's the same. With only a few small exceptions as it's Metallica's game. First up is the Metallifacts option that you get unlocked after beating a song in carear mode. Metallicfacts is similar to pop-up video but subtitles instead of info popping up on the screen in little handy bubbles. So the game basically plays the song for you complete with band and just scrolls some odd and stupid facts about that song on the bottom of the screen. The problem with this so-called mode is that they don't seem to have enough facts for ANY of the songs in the game, and once they run out it constantly loops the facts. Another unique feature of the game is one of the cheat modes called Always Drum Fill, and it has to be the most fun I've had yet with the music game genre. What it does when turned on is it will play the song for you as usual and the drum track is blank....you play the drums.....however you want....with any song in the game..... Like if you want to play Fuel and have no drums at all, but just keep hitting the cymbals...you could...It would sound like shit, but you could! Also they have models for Metallica, King Diamond and also Lemmy, so when you play songs by them they show up on stage, yepee.....cause I can just stare at the band when playing, you know and not pay attention to the note track...ugh...bonus characters are pointless for me in these games, I make my guy and I'm happy.

Side Note - Holy shit that was longer than I expected, oh well, hope you've played one of the previous ones then. I'm thirsty, off to get a drink.

Gameplay -
Ok I got my drink and now it's time to actually talk about the way the game plays. Lets break it down then. On guitar and bass the game plays just as previous guitar hero games with actually no changes at all, only thing would be the addition of what I call the star slider thingy, which is exactly what it sounds like. It is a small slider bar in the bottom right of the screen that indicates to you how close you are to your next star, under this thing is the note counter as well if you get over around 30 note streak you will see it counting. On the Drums the game plays the same again with the difference being a greater challenging mode, Expert + mode which is something they cooked up at least for this game, who knows if it will make it into the next one. But what it does is requires you to have a mono-splitter and a second bass pedal, as the mode is according to Neversoft (developers) a complete drum track....meaning that it has all the drum notes in there complete with double kick bass portions (hence the need for the extra crap). I did not get to try this feature as I did not want to go buy extra crap to play a single mode in one game.

Sidenote - Apparently if you pre-ordered this from Best-Buy or Gamespot/EBgames you were supposed to get a free splitter and pedal....or at least the pedal. I rented mine so that's why I didn't try Expert +.

Presentation -
Guitar Hero! Oh you cartoony bitch of a game, you are seriously going to fuck up some kids view of the rock-stars they idolize. The game looks like previous versions with a slight more realistic modeling for the main characters, as I'm sure Metallica would have raped them if they didn't do that right. Well I'm hoping someone at least got a guitar impaled up thier ass for the job they did making them look sort of like good action figures come to life, it was good in a sence and I bet fans of Metallica won't care, but I do! Ok, I stopped caring. The presentation is well done with the menu's working the way they should, except for having to wait for the damn thing check for downloadable content every single time I boot the game even thou they have said the ONLY DLC for this short short game is the Death Magnetic Album and nothing else is going to be released. STOP CHECKING FOR SOMETHING THAT IS NOT THERE EVERY TIME! And why the hell do I have to tell it to save to my hard drive every single time I boot it? Can't it locate a save and just use it unless I have a memory card hooked in? I guess it's not that smart, or maybe the developers arn't that smart? I think I just hit a nail on the head, the good developers all went to work for EA and MTV games and they churn out Rock Band 2, which has something like 500+ songs (with DLC) and oh wait?! is that?!?! yes! A easy way for it to check for DLC only when you get new stuff, and if it checks at all...it's so quick you don't freak out like I did a minute ago.

Side Note - See above I kinda ranted a bit there....sorry. hehehe

Overall -
The game feels like a Guitar Hero game, the game plays like a Guitar Hero game....so why don't I like it as much as I do the Guitar Hero Games?!?! Oh wait...I know, it's because in a game called Guitar Hero I don't see why they need to release band-specific versions, why can't we get some sweet DLC for World Tour that has all the models and everything included? More or less what I am getting at here is this game has TOO MUCH METALLICA. They are a good band so don't start the flaming yet. I played the game, I enjoyed the game, but I did not like being nearly forced to play Metallica almost every other song with no guest stars either! At the very least the Aerosmith version had more songs by other artists and even some guest stars on thier own songs. I know there are Metallica fans out there and they should enjoy this game to the fullest, but someone like me who likes Metallica but is not a large fan? It's a huge and tedious affair that unlike previous Guitar Hero and Rock Band games I found I was switching off for a break much quicker and for longer periods with this one.

Score = 3/4 Baked (4 Out Of 5)
Percentage = 86%/100%

Update - Monday?

2009-03-30T20:34:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone! (ya I know there are only two people even following)

Anyway, this week I'm going to try and get a few reviews out - INCLUDING :

1 . Death Proof (as requested by a fan)
2. Guitar Hero : Metallica (which already has too much metallica)
3. Quaker Granola Crunchers (snack food - mmm food)
4. Kellogg's Special K Crispy Bites - Strawberry Flavor

So, look for them, as I'm going to try and post all this and hopefully more this week.

- Baked-Boy-Wonder (I dunno, just messing around and I just saw a pic of Batman and Robin) lol