Spankoff: Home of the Delayed Reaction
I have this annoying habit of watching movies without thinking. I guess it sort of goes like this: Gratuitous nudity (nice), senseless violence (cool), ooooh!! Pretty colors!
Yay! Terra like pretty colors!
But occasionally my brain wakes up like a lazy Mexican taking a five day siesta and thinks, What the fuck was that shit?!
I think these two movies are the ones that spontaneously kicked in my delayed reaction so badly that I actually NOTICED it, and now I have to do a review. Because I'm pissy, and when I'm pissy I need to vent or cut something.
FearDotCom
How I came to see this movie is quite a twisted tale. Twisted because my friend that KNOWS I hate scary movies, hate hate hate them, made me watch this. Scary movies creep me the fuck out. So one morning while laying on his couch Albie snuck out of his room and said, "Are you awake?" Of course I'm awake, that's why my eyes are open moron. The rest of the house was still sleeping, we were both still slightly drunk, so when Albie ran back to his room screaming, "YAY! Terra's awake!" I should've known something was up.
Rule number one with drinking buddies, never let them know what you're afraid of. They will always fuck with you later.
Albie came back with this movie in his hands and popped it into the dvd player while chanting, "OHMYGODYOUAREGOINGTOBESOSCARED!!"
Nice. I stared at the screen blankly for a long time thinking, do not show your fear, do not show your fear, if Albie smells blood he will go for the jugular.
So here's the basis for the movie (think The Ring), lots of people dead, detective sent to investigate, obligatory woman assigned to help him to add in to the sexual element. They discover that all of the people dying viewed a web site, fear dot com, three days before they died and then their computer melted everywhere. What's fear dot com? An underground web site that broadcasts the murders of young women. So now they have to find the man killing the girls, save the latest girl, and escape the ghost of the girl now determined to kill them for viewing the website. Nicely typical but scary none the less.
Now my brain doesn't like to be scared, so slowly it started to wake up which is when it screamed, OH MY GOD THIS MOVIE HAS MORE PLOT HOLES THAN A BLIND MAN'S WHORE!
(does that expletive even work? oh well, you get my point)
Here's the part where it started to all unravel for me. To figure out where the girls are they decided to track down where the sexy ghost girl died. To do this they find her mother and travel to her house for a bit of an interview. At the house we see pictures of ghost girl as a little girl (maybe 6 or 7):
Now let's get this straight, her mother is completely normal looking and acting in every way. The house is in a lower income blue collar neighborhood, and yet somehow I'm to believe that she was running around looking like an albino and her mother let her dress in all white and play all day long with a big white ball? If that was my kid I'd grab her by her long ass hair and beat the shit out of her for being so scary looking.
FUH-REAK!
Then, at the end of the interview the mother let's it slip that as a little girl her daughter LOVED playing in the nearby abandoned power plant.
Um. Yeah. Because if I had a little girl I'd let her play in abandoned powered plants ALL THE TIME.
So they take off to the power plant which is supposedly just down the street. Why does this strike me as odd? Because when they leave the mother's house it appears to be late afternoon. By the time they arrive at the power plant it's pitch black.
Pitch black? I mean, the fucking place was five minutes away and now they need flashlights? And the homeless people around the power plant (who I'm sure the mother would've vouched for as excellent childhood friends) even have bon fires going to warm them and give them light. Boy those homeless sure work fast when it comes time for darkness!
Except... wait. They only have three days before they're dead right? Okay, if this was me I would be FLIPPING THE FUCK OUT that it's night already! I mean HOLY FUCKING JESUS WE ONLY HAVE THREE DAYS TO LIVE!!!
So I made Albert rewind the film, just so I could count the exact amount of times it went from light to dark after they began the three day count down to death doom and destruction. I don't remember the exact amount of days that I came up with now but the end story is that they should have DIED WAY BEFORE I WAS FORCED TO CONTINUE WATCHING THIS DRIVEL!!!
Speaking of which, remember that blue collar neighborhood where everyone was about American as apple pie? Yeah, can someone please explain to me how that little girl grew up to have a European accent?
Look, I know, accents are fucking sexier... or something. But for Christs fucking sake, at least make the bitch a foreign exchange student then, ANY FUCKING THING TO MAKE SURE THAT THIS MOVIE DOESN'T PROVE WHAT A CRAP WRITER YOU ARE.
Sidewalks of New York
Ed Burns is so fucking hot. He wrote, starred in, and directed this. He's, um, hot. Anyway, after watching this I went and read some reviews that stated this was very "Woody Allen".
I don't know what that means because I try not to expose myself to art that sucks. If I had an ice pick and twenty minutes with everyone looking the other way while I killed whichever celebrities I wished, Woody Allen would definitely be on that list.
So would Paris Hilton... I think you know why.
(Oh let me writhe on a soapy car while I pretend to actually eat food... but really I'm going to put a chemical peel on my face and hands for touching this... gross... meat thing. )
Anyway, back to Sidewalks of New York. I'd heard of this, and I'd seen Ed Burns, so I put it on my netflix cue. Now initially after viewing this I thought, 'Eh. Not half bad'.
But something kept gnawing at me... like a rat or pubic lice. It was a bad dirty feeling that would just not go away. So then I sat there and pondered. Now I rarely ponder so you can imagine how vexed I was.
Then it hit me. This movie SUCKED!
It was the most badly cast, misdirected piece of shit I've ever seen!
Okay, let me tell you the premise of the movie: Following a large cast of supposedly random New Yorkers this movie is supposed to run as a documentary on love in the city. All of the characters are randomly interviewed and then we follow them in their daily romantic lives.
Here's where it all falls apart, none of these fucking couples look good together. They are so badly matched that it's beyond laughable. Take for instance Heather Graham and Dennis What-the-fuck-do-I-care:
Yeah. They're supposed to be married. Okay, maybe I can buy this, except not once does Heather ever say, I married him for the money. That, possibly believable, but just plain old, 'oh we're married'? Yeah, I'm NOT buying it. No way, no how, not even if you threw in a free lube job.
Then there's Rosario Dawson. I do have to say that this is the hottest I have ever seen her look. I just kept staring thinking, ohmygodshe'shot. HOT! And then it dawned on me, she totally looks like a Hispanic Angelina Jolie in this movie.
But even though she is one of the better actors in this movie, she's still terribly miscast. TERRIBLY. Plus, they made her ex-husband a short Jewish kid. What the fuck ever. They look awful together.
Now let's go to the part where I say it's badly directed. Here's the thing, during all of the fight scenes with her husband, Heather Graham is SMILING AND AT ONE POINT ALMOST LAUGHS!
(Mental note: When you get married make sure it's with someone you don't give a shit about so you can laugh while you discuss divorce)
Rosario doesn't do that badly in her fight scenes with the husband, except, well, it's just not believable. There they are in the flashback scenes of their marriage, they're yelling, slamming doors, but... their hearts aren't breaking. They're just going through the motions, and it shows.
It also shows what a HORRIBLE FUCKING DIRECTOR THEY HAD! How in the fuck did these become the final cuts?
After looking the movie up online I discovered that it was shot in 17 days. Well, it shows.
Yay! Terra like pretty colors!
But occasionally my brain wakes up like a lazy Mexican taking a five day siesta and thinks, What the fuck was that shit?!
I think these two movies are the ones that spontaneously kicked in my delayed reaction so badly that I actually NOTICED it, and now I have to do a review. Because I'm pissy, and when I'm pissy I need to vent or cut something.
FearDotCom
How I came to see this movie is quite a twisted tale. Twisted because my friend that KNOWS I hate scary movies, hate hate hate them, made me watch this. Scary movies creep me the fuck out. So one morning while laying on his couch Albie snuck out of his room and said, "Are you awake?" Of course I'm awake, that's why my eyes are open moron. The rest of the house was still sleeping, we were both still slightly drunk, so when Albie ran back to his room screaming, "YAY! Terra's awake!" I should've known something was up.
Rule number one with drinking buddies, never let them know what you're afraid of. They will always fuck with you later.
Albie came back with this movie in his hands and popped it into the dvd player while chanting, "OHMYGODYOUAREGOINGTOBESOSCARED!!"
Nice. I stared at the screen blankly for a long time thinking, do not show your fear, do not show your fear, if Albie smells blood he will go for the jugular.
So here's the basis for the movie (think The Ring), lots of people dead, detective sent to investigate, obligatory woman assigned to help him to add in to the sexual element. They discover that all of the people dying viewed a web site, fear dot com, three days before they died and then their computer melted everywhere. What's fear dot com? An underground web site that broadcasts the murders of young women. So now they have to find the man killing the girls, save the latest girl, and escape the ghost of the girl now determined to kill them for viewing the website. Nicely typical but scary none the less.
Now my brain doesn't like to be scared, so slowly it started to wake up which is when it screamed, OH MY GOD THIS MOVIE HAS MORE PLOT HOLES THAN A BLIND MAN'S WHORE!
(does that expletive even work? oh well, you get my point)
Here's the part where it started to all unravel for me. To figure out where the girls are they decided to track down where the sexy ghost girl died. To do this they find her mother and travel to her house for a bit of an interview. At the house we see pictures of ghost girl as a little girl (maybe 6 or 7):
Now let's get this straight, her mother is completely normal looking and acting in every way. The house is in a lower income blue collar neighborhood, and yet somehow I'm to believe that she was running around looking like an albino and her mother let her dress in all white and play all day long with a big white ball? If that was my kid I'd grab her by her long ass hair and beat the shit out of her for being so scary looking.
FUH-REAK!
Then, at the end of the interview the mother let's it slip that as a little girl her daughter LOVED playing in the nearby abandoned power plant.
Um. Yeah. Because if I had a little girl I'd let her play in abandoned powered plants ALL THE TIME.
So they take off to the power plant which is supposedly just down the street. Why does this strike me as odd? Because when they leave the mother's house it appears to be late afternoon. By the time they arrive at the power plant it's pitch black.
Pitch black? I mean, the fucking place was five minutes away and now they need flashlights? And the homeless people around the power plant (who I'm sure the mother would've vouched for as excellent childhood friends) even have bon fires going to warm them and give them light. Boy those homeless sure work fast when it comes time for darkness!
Except... wait. They only have three days before they're dead right? Okay, if this was me I would be FLIPPING THE FUCK OUT that it's night already! I mean HOLY FUCKING JESUS WE ONLY HAVE THREE DAYS TO LIVE!!!
So I made Albert rewind the film, just so I could count the exact amount of times it went from light to dark after they began the three day count down to death doom and destruction. I don't remember the exact amount of days that I came up with now but the end story is that they should have DIED WAY BEFORE I WAS FORCED TO CONTINUE WATCHING THIS DRIVEL!!!
Speaking of which, remember that blue collar neighborhood where everyone was about American as apple pie? Yeah, can someone please explain to me how that little girl grew up to have a European accent?
Look, I know, accents are fucking sexier... or something. But for Christs fucking sake, at least make the bitch a foreign exchange student then, ANY FUCKING THING TO MAKE SURE THAT THIS MOVIE DOESN'T PROVE WHAT A CRAP WRITER YOU ARE.
Sidewalks of New York
Ed Burns is so fucking hot. He wrote, starred in, and directed this. He's, um, hot. Anyway, after watching this I went and read some reviews that stated this was very "Woody Allen".
I don't know what that means because I try not to expose myself to art that sucks. If I had an ice pick and twenty minutes with everyone looking the other way while I killed whichever celebrities I wished, Woody Allen would definitely be on that list.
So would Paris Hilton... I think you know why.
(Oh let me writhe on a soapy car while I pretend to actually eat food... but really I'm going to put a chemical peel on my face and hands for touching this... gross... meat thing. )
Anyway, back to Sidewalks of New York. I'd heard of this, and I'd seen Ed Burns, so I put it on my netflix cue. Now initially after viewing this I thought, 'Eh. Not half bad'.
But something kept gnawing at me... like a rat or pubic lice. It was a bad dirty feeling that would just not go away. So then I sat there and pondered. Now I rarely ponder so you can imagine how vexed I was.
Then it hit me. This movie SUCKED!
It was the most badly cast, misdirected piece of shit I've ever seen!
Okay, let me tell you the premise of the movie: Following a large cast of supposedly random New Yorkers this movie is supposed to run as a documentary on love in the city. All of the characters are randomly interviewed and then we follow them in their daily romantic lives.
Here's where it all falls apart, none of these fucking couples look good together. They are so badly matched that it's beyond laughable. Take for instance Heather Graham and Dennis What-the-fuck-do-I-care:
Yeah. They're supposed to be married. Okay, maybe I can buy this, except not once does Heather ever say, I married him for the money. That, possibly believable, but just plain old, 'oh we're married'? Yeah, I'm NOT buying it. No way, no how, not even if you threw in a free lube job.
Then there's Rosario Dawson. I do have to say that this is the hottest I have ever seen her look. I just kept staring thinking, ohmygodshe'shot. HOT! And then it dawned on me, she totally looks like a Hispanic Angelina Jolie in this movie.
But even though she is one of the better actors in this movie, she's still terribly miscast. TERRIBLY. Plus, they made her ex-husband a short Jewish kid. What the fuck ever. They look awful together.
Now let's go to the part where I say it's badly directed. Here's the thing, during all of the fight scenes with her husband, Heather Graham is SMILING AND AT ONE POINT ALMOST LAUGHS!
(Mental note: When you get married make sure it's with someone you don't give a shit about so you can laugh while you discuss divorce)
Rosario doesn't do that badly in her fight scenes with the husband, except, well, it's just not believable. There they are in the flashback scenes of their marriage, they're yelling, slamming doors, but... their hearts aren't breaking. They're just going through the motions, and it shows.
It also shows what a HORRIBLE FUCKING DIRECTOR THEY HAD! How in the fuck did these become the final cuts?
After looking the movie up online I discovered that it was shot in 17 days. Well, it shows.
