Adam and Eve (2005)

    This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen.  It's completely devoid of humor.  Not even frat-boy dick and fart jokes humor.  It has nothing.  It is poorly written, terribly acted, and an utter waste of a DVD.  Of course it's Christy's, but here's the thing:  she doesn't even like this movie.  In fact, she called it the worst movie she's ever seen (and that's saying something).  Why does she own it?  Who the hell knows.

Adam (Cameron Douglas) wants to have sex with his girlfriend Eve (Emmanuelle Chriqui) but she's waiting for the "perfect" moment.  His retarded frat-brothers make fun of him for holding out.  That's all there is.

They drag this out over a year.  A year.  I'd have dumped her frigid ass within a month.  Not that I'm saying you should get your V-card punched by the first person who asks, but if you're still on the fence about sleeping with a dude after a year, cut him loose.  You're not doing anyone any favors.  His friends are sick of hearing about it.  Your friends are sick of hearing about it.  Mount him on your wall or release him back to the wild. 

The End.

Thunderball (1965)

  I really don't have an intro for this one.

James Bond (Sean Connery) is always on the job, no matter what he's actually doing.  Whether it's escaping from a manor house by jet pack or relaxing at a spa, he's always got an eye out for danger.  And easily coerced female spa employees.  This serves him well when M (Bernard Lee) puts him on the case of two missing nuclear warheads.  Their old nemesis SPECTRE is back up to nasty little tricks, demanding millions of dollars in diamonds for the return of the warheads.  Henchman #2, Emil Largo (Adolfo Celi), has the warheads safely hidden in the Caribbean, he thinks, but he also has a hot mistress named Domino (Claudine Auger) and as everyone knows, Bond can sniff out beautiful women like a shark can sniff out a wounded fish.  It's this weakness that fiery assassin Fiona (Luciana Paluzzi) is counting on.

This movie spent about half its running time underwater and there are some great shots of wildlife and reefs interspersed amongst the scuba fighting.  Plotwise, there are a number of elements I could have done without but it's not too bad.  I just think a "less is more" approach would have been better here.  I will say it was nice to see where exactly Mike Meyers got the inspiration for Robert Wagner's character in The Spy Who Shagged Me.  As soon as I saw the eyepatch, I was sold.

The Raven (2012)

Happy Veteran's Day!  Here's a completely unrelated movie!    When I first heard about this movie, I was very excited.  John Cusack playing Edgar Allen Poe in a murder mystery?  That's like Godiva truffles stuffed into Lo Mein and wrapped in a pepperoni pizza.  But like some favorite things, these elements were better off separate. 

Edgar Allen Poe (John Cusack) is on his way to being a complete alcoholic when he is picked up and questioned for a murder of two women in a locked room.  A situation eerily similar to a story Poe had published years ago.  Detective Fields (Luke Evans) enlists Poe's help as a consultant when it becomes clear that the murderer is using the various stories to strike ever closer within Poe's circle of acquaintances, until finally kidnapping Emily (Alice Eve), the poet's girlfriend. Using Emily as a hostage, the killer taunts police with clues on each subsequent victim, pitting his genius against Poe's. 

There was no reason why I should have disliked this movie.  It's competently acted, if a little shout-y, by good actors, dependable actors.  The mood, the cinematography, the set dressing, the music all came together.  It had an adequate number of thrills with a decently thought out plot.  It's not the greatest or most innovative but it told a story and told it thoroughly. 

I still didn't like it. 

But I can't put my finger on why I didn't like it.  That bothers me more than anything else.  It's one thing to say I didn't like Water for Elephants.  Sappy romances just don't do it for me.  That's acceptable.  What is not acceptable is to not know why you didn't like something.  How can I avoid these things in the future if I don't know what the warning signs are?  This movie looked like it had everything going for it.  Favorite actor?  Check.  Gory, gruesome deaths?  Check.  Cat and mouse game between the forces of good and evil?  Check.  Maybe it just really is like the favorite food abomination I described, a sum worth less than its parts.

Goldfinger (1964)

  I think this marks the point where the Bond movies started to slide into stupid puns and Swiss cheese plots. 

James Bond (Sean Connery) is back in action, on the trail of smuggler Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe).  Unfortunately, it seems all those shaken martinis have pickled James' brains since he pretty much blunders through the investigation, getting caught time and again by Goldfinger's goons Oddjob (Harold Sakota) and Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman).  First, there's his hamhanded antagonizing of Goldfinger when Bond catches him cheating at cards, using the lovely Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) as a spotter.  When Jill is killed by the application of gold paint (instead of just saying she was smothered then covered in paint, they make a point of telling the audience that the paint caused "skin asphyxiation"), Bond puts his personal feelings aside and goes after Goldfinger again.  He manages to get Jill's sister Tilly (Tania Mallet) killed as well before falling directly into Goldfinger's pudgy hands.  The crime lord is all set to bisect Bond with his shiny new industrial laser but Bond successfully bluffs a man so bad at poker he has to hire an escort to help him cheat.  High bar there.  Afraid of what Bond might know, Goldfinger ships him off to his main headquarters in Kentucky.  There, in between trips back and forth to his cell, Bond discovers that Goldfinger plans to nuke the gold reserves of Ft. Knox, disrupting the world economy and making his private reserves invaluable. 

Honestly, if you needed the best example of how extraneous Bond is to the plot of his own movie, look at the bomb diffusion scene.  After being handcuffed to the device and killing bad guys for almost all of the 5 minute countdown, Bond manages to get the case of the bomb open.  He starts frantically grabbing bundles of wires and is about to just yank out a random handful when one of the American scientists walks in, calmly moves him out of the way, and turns off the device.  Radioactive disaster averted, no thanks at all to IQ 007. 

The roles for women in this film continue to be paper-thin.  I had some hopes for Honor Blackman as Goldfinger's personal pilot.  She seemed like a morally ambiguous to downright cold-blooded character but all it took to sway her was a sweaty roll in the hay with our hero.  Because women's minds are so weak, a good hard dicking is all you need to jar that moral compass in the right direction. 

Here's hoping the next one in the line-up tries a little harder.

The Man with the Iron Fists (2012)

  This movie was awesomely, gloriously, stupidly violent.  And I mean that in the best possible sense.

Saturday, Christy and I went to see Vamps but it wasn't actually playing at the theater we like.  Somewhat disappointed, we just decided to see whatever was playing next.  And, lo, the heavens did open up and a voice spake "Thou shalt see The Man with the Iron Fists".  And it was good.

I'm not sure what the other people in the theater thought this movie was going to be.  From the opening credits, which are freeze frames of battle scenes in the most cheesetastic 70's style font and colors, to the dialogue, which is exactly what you would expect from a movie written by Wu Tang Clan founder RZA, it is balls-out crazy.  And everybody knows that's my favorite kind of crazy.  It's not a particularly well-acted movie.  Jamie Chung in particular should have known better.  But it's an instant B-movie classic and, for that, I will own it.

Thaddeus the blacksmith (RZA) is trying to save up enough money to elope with Lady Silk (Jamie Chung) and buy her out of her contract at Madame Blossom's (Lucy Liu) brothel.  At the same time, the Lion Clan has had a change of leadership when Silver Lion (Byron Mann) conspires with assassin Poison Dagger (Daniel Wu) to kill Gold Lion (Kuan Tai Chen) so they can steal a shipment of gold headed north.  Gold Lion's son, the X Blade (Rick Yune) hears about the murder and comes to town to avenge his father.  Silver Lion hires Brass Body (Dave Bautista), a brawler with impenetrable skin, to kill the X Blade. 

This film really is a love story to the old style of low-quality Chinese and Japanese martial arts films from the 70s.  There's a whole Enter the Dragon sequence with a hall of mirrors, and some of the Hyena Clan reminded me of the bandits from Lady Snowblood, plus hosts of others I'm sure.  People spurt blood like firehoses and sport impractically beautiful clothing and weapons while zooming overhead on wires.

In short, it is absolutely amazeballs and you should go see it.

Burma VJ (2008)

  This documentary has been sitting in my queue for almost three years now.  It was from my very first Oscar batch.

Don't go to Burma.  And for God's sake, don't take a camera there.  It's really depressing.

This documentary is put together from footage collected by an intrepid group of video reporters inside the military-controlled country of Burma (or Myanmar, depending on who you ask) during the demonstrations in September 2007.  The opposition is led by Buddhist monks, protesting the treatment of the populace.  Hundreds of monks gather, rallying the citizens of Rangoon to join them.  The video reporters are on hand to document this as well as the violent government crack-down that follows.  Dozens of people are round up, beaten, and arrested every day.  A curfew is put in place and anyone caught with a camera receives equal punishment.  Still, the reporters risk their lives to smuggle the footage out of the country in the hopes that the world will pay attention.

Seriously, don't watch this movie if you're depressed.  It will do nothing for you.  Like The Cove, you should only watch it if you're really happy and you need to come down a few pegs.  Then you can watch this.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

  This is the original Swedish version, not the American remake with Daniel Craig.  It is miles and away better, becoming that rare property that is more than its source. 
Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is a disgraced journalist hired by an aging industrialist named Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube) to investigate the 40-year-old disappearance of Vanger's niece Harriet, same as the American version.  But what this movie gets right is focusing less on Blomkvist and more on Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace).  It adds more detail about why she is the way she is, which is not in the first book, but was a welcome change. 

Overall, the pacing was much better and the cinematography was much less boring.  I particularly liked the fact that everything is gray and snow-covered in the beginning but moves to a delicately green spring as the mystery is revealed.  It's an almost literal breath of fresh air.

I hated the book.  It did not hold any joy for me and I found it a chore to read.  I would not read the second one.  I wouldn't watch the second American version.  But I have already added the second Swedish one to my Netflix queue.  That's how good it is.