Posts Tagged ‘adventure’
The Losers
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010There may be so much backstabbing and gunfire on this flick that at one level I really misplaced track of who was shooting whom and why. Not that I actually cared. Killing and carnage should not be sport. However you wouldn’t know that from watching The Losers.
This is a callous film, certainly, even for a picture that hints at darkish comedy.
The unhealthy man here (Max) is so dangerous as to be ridiculous. He shoots his assistant lifeless for letting the umbrella she’s holding for him flutter in the wind, for instance.
As for the good guys-the Losers? They dwell as much as their name. Making an attempt to save lots of a gaggle of children in the opening minutes hardly makes up for Clay and Roque chuckling and high-fiving one another after blowing up a police SUV, killing any officers inside and doubtlessly hurting passersby. Jensen (with assist from Cougar) makes a sport of killing safety guards who’re simply doing their jobs after he breaks into an office building.
So as the screening audience laughed at innocent folks’s violent deaths or accidents, I internally indifferent from the who-achieved-whom-mistaken dilemmas onscreen and took to wondering what exactly makes onscreen violence so much fun for so many moviegoers.
That was exactly the second at which a man’s physique gets sucked into a jet engine.
Because the audience sniggered, I spotted the one answer needs to be desensitization. Evidently, if one watches enough of this stuff, morbidity turns into hilarity, pain into entertainment, proper into wrong.
Yes, great comic materials, all those other people’s demises. Hatred, informal sex, rifle butts to the pinnacle, blackmail, set-ups, too. It’s all just good humor and a fun time at the movies.
At the very least that is what we’re told.

Furry Vengeance
Thursday, April 1st, 2010Furry Vengeance is one of those flicks that is aimed squarely at kids. It is full of scores of anthropomorphized, CGI-enlivened critters which might be preternaturally brilliant and as smooth and cuddly wanting as a lineup of Construct-A-Bear bunnies. Add in a lot of goofy Brendan Fraser pratfalls replete with “help-me-mommy” deadpans and you’ve got a surefire winner, right?
Well …
What seems to be bulletproof in a story logline does not at all times pan out on the screen. And this eye-rollingly foolish pic is Exhibit A. Or at least Exhibit M. “A silly, imply-spirited little film that ranks down there with the worst in recent memory. Distant memory, too,” rants Invoice Goodykoontz in the Arizona Republic.
Positive, the nibbling squirrels and brainstorming raccoons might look cute, however their assaults on good guy Dan … aren’t. All of the crotch thumps, skunk sprays and garments-shredding scratches and bites quickly take on the uncomfortable-and unfunny-feeling of something like torture. And it is a slapstick torture that’s basted in a steady spray of toilet humor.
“My first response when I learn the script was, ‘Please, please, inform me I get hit with fowl poop,’” actress Angela Kinsey advised movieset.com. Though she may have been speaking with tongue planted firmly in cheek, Kinsey definitely got her wish. And everyone else will get to affix in on the wish fulfillment in a method or another, too. Particularly Dan.
In truth, though, the movie desires to do greater than drop glop and frequently bang away at poor outdated Danny boy. Produced by activist production house Participant Media, the film is designed to bang away at an environmental agenda drum, too.
Participant’s web site describes the Furry action this manner: “A band of animals battle the efforts of an actual property developer attempting to construct a brand new housing neighborhood in a wilderness space and find yourself teaching him a lesson concerning the environmental consequences of man’s encroachment on nature.”
In different phrases, Dan is battered and tattered until he finally has to limp into the general public eye and admit just how evil his job of building homes for humans actually is.
Environmental accountability is one thing. I take no issue with a movie stressing the importance of preserving and protecting nature. However the one-dimensional and heavy-pawed Furry Vengeance does not do the environmental cause, young viewers … or anybody on the lookout for moviegoing pleasure any favors.
Or, as Lisa Schwarzbaum puts it in her Leisure Weekly evaluation, “I am not convinced that repeated assaults to the groin, bee stings to the eyes, raccoon pee in the mouth, or skunk stink sprayed head to toe is the way to show ecological balance.”
Stream Furry Vengeance Movie Online

Dark Relic
Saturday, March 27th, 2010Recommended Movies:Shutter IslandBatman: The Dark KnightThe Road
How to Train Your Dragon
Thursday, March 18th, 2010DreamWorks Animation tries a new tack, embracing sincerity over satire, with “How to Train Your Dragon,” a thrilling drama interspersed with amusing comedic elements (rather than the other way around) from “Lilo and Stitch” directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois.


