Bryce's Pipe Bomb Survival Guide*

In case you're wondering, midterms are over, and I did pretty well, but now I'm already stressing the oral exam in my philosophy class. In other news, I finally rewatched Playing God the other day. Playing God is crime thriller from the mid 90s, starring David Duchovny as a surgeon who lost his license because of drug use, and Timothy Hutton as an organized crime boss. Angelina Jolie's also in there as a mutual love interest to make a neat little triangle. I watched it back when it first came to home video, and it made a really big impression on me, I've always thought of it as one of my favorites. Watching Timothy Hutton as a sort of anti-hero on the show Leverage has lately had me wanting to rewatch my favorite role of his. I still really like Hutton's character, I really wish this had let him branch out to playing more villainous roles, but the movie was a critical and commercial flop. The rest of the movie, is pretty bad. Duchovny was tailor made for the noir-es...

I finally watched Sucker Punch, and I'm still a little disappointed that I didn't see it in the theater. Not because it was good, but because there are a few scenes that scream to be seen on a huge screen in a dark room. Trying to figure out what Sucker Punch is about based on the trailers is pretty pointless. The trailers present you with images of a girl being admitted to a gothic mental institution, and then crazy fight scenes with zombies, dragons, and giant mechanical samurai. I read a few reviews to try and get a better understanding of what it was actually about, and was still clueless, other than now I knew there was also a burlesque theater involved somehow. So here's the skinny: Our heroine, known simply as Baby Doll, is admitted to a mental institution by her stepfather, after she had tried to shoot him in order to keep him from raping her younger sister, and missed and killed her sister instead. The stepfather has paid an orderly at the asylum to make sure that ...

I watched Battle: LA over the weekend, and I gotta say, I don't see where all the hate for this movie comes from. Maybe hate's a strong word, but I don't recall seeing a single positive review for it. To summarize, it's the story of a Marine unit that's tasked with evacuating Los Angeles during an alien invasion. I don't want to get too spoilery in this, but I thought it was a pretty good movie. I can see how it might turn some people off though, because it doesn't really fit into any of the standard science fiction move genres, kind of like District 9. Not to say that the two movies are at all alike, other than neither of them really fits into the "blockbuster scifi explod-aganza". The entire time I watched the movie, I was saying to myself, "these feel like real marines" they aren't supermen, they're not geniuses, they aren't unkillable. One of my favorite parts of the movie is during the first up close confrontation with an...

What can I say about this movie? It was good, and it was absolutely worth watching. Natalie Portman (playing Nina) looks like a ballerina, and plays perfectly into the role of the socially awkward perfectionist with an extremely repressed passionate side. Mila Kunis (playing Lily) also did a great job as her more carefree rival in the company. I thought Winona Ryder was an inspired choice for the older dancer forced into retirement, and I was sad that she was featured so little. Okay, I've got that out of the way, what can I tell you about the plot that won't give anything away? So, it's about a ballet company, whose star dancer has just retired (forcefully) and they're now going to move on to a new show, featuring a new dancer from the ranks moving to prominence. The show that they are going to perfom is Swan Lake , (please follow that link if you want know anything about it, because I'm only working on what I learned from the movie) But! They're going...

Yes, I was trying to use as many colons as I could there. Really, I've got very little to say about this movie. Have you played any of the recent Prince of Persia games? If so, it's exactly what you'd expect. Lots of fun action scenes, with a good mix of parkour and just general acrobatics. Everything else about it is pretty much crap though. I usually don't like to point out the tendency Hollywood has to cast actors in spite of the logical ethnicity of the setting, but Jake Gyllenhal and Gemma Aterton as Persian royalty. Oddly Alfred Molina is actually pretty entertaining as the owner of an ostrich racing gambling establishment. Really, there's ostrich racing, after watching the initial, surprisingly long ostrich race, I found myself saying "what the hell am I watching?" Bottom line, it's fun, but you definitely have to turn your brain off before watching.

I didn't realize for quite awhile that the Gone in 60 Seconds movie released in 2000 was actually a remake. The original movie was made in 1974 and has the same basic premise as the later remake, although this one seems to have been much more a labor of love. H.B. Halicki wrote, produced, directed, and starred in a movie about an insurance investigator who runs an auto shop. On the side, however, he buys totaled cars at auction, salvages whatever parts they can, and then steal all of the identification numbers off it. The next step is to go steal an identical car, and swap out all of the identification numbers and sell it. Much like the hitman who says "no women, no kids", this car thief only steals from people that are insured. It's a victimless crime! (Not really of course, but that's the impression the movie tries to give you.) Our hero takes on a job from some foreign scary guys, to boost 40 cars in 48 hours, and deliver them to the docks, I assume for ex...

I think I watched this movie under the ideal reviewing conditions. I, having read the comic, sat down and watched it with my wife, who hasn't read it. First and foremost, this movie is an adaptation that take some liberties, so don't go into it expecting the panel by panel reproduction of the book that we got with Watchmen, 300 and Sin City. There are a lot of concessions made to the story to make it fit more in theme with a traditional Hollywood movie, like... I'm trying to dance around giving any spoilers away if you haven't seen the movie and/or read the book. It's really hard. Okay, so, background. Our hero is just some schmo high school comic nerd, he lives in a world without any form of costumed heroes, and one day, he has the epiphany that why hasn't someone just put on a costume and gone out and fought crime? Is it that far beyond belief that someone would get tired of seeing bad things happen, and put on a costume and do something about it? So, he ...

Remember that movie where Jack Nicholson was a werewolf? No? Seems that not many people do, which is a shame, because it might be my favorite film representation of the wolfman. The story kicks off with our man Jack as the editor in chief of a publishing house, which has recently been bought out by a billionaire tycoon. On a return trip from out of town, he hits a wolf with his car, and when he gets out to investigate, it plays dead until he gets close, and then it bites him and runs off. Anyone who sees a werewolf movie will be familiar with the coming scenes of him discovering new animalistic traits in himself. There are two things that keep this from just being a run of the mill monster flick, first, it's Jack, if ever there was an actor who didn't need makeup to play a wolfman, it's Jack, aside from just having the look, he's also got that subtle, creepy, intimidating matter that really sells the alpha dog in a business setting. The second thing that stands out,...

If you spend anytime reading about people's favorite post apocalyptic flicks, almost invariably you'll see an item on everyone's list, and that' Six String Samurai. I finally tracked it down and gave it a watch. I don't think anyone quite prepared me for what I was going to see, and I'll admit that my expectations were a little high. Just take a look at that movie poster up there, drink it in for a minute. There's a certain joy in the visual design, with the hero being dressed remeniscent of Buddy Holly, and the villain as Slash. That joy in design pervades the entire movie, with many characters and groups of characters being homages to either musical icons or at least fashion trends. Every new scene reveals something new and delightful to see. The backstory is that Russia nukes the US in 1957, and Las Vegas, being one of the least affected areas, becomes the center of a new society, with Elvis as its king, centered around rock and roll, and ass kicki...

Let's get this right out of the way, this is not a science fiction movie, time travel is just treated as a magical effect that lets our heroes travel back in time, where they do all kinds of stuff that should create any number of paradoxes. The premise is: Three friends and a nephew take a trip to relive the friends' glory days, staying in the same hotel room that they stayed in 24 years prior. After a night of drinking heavily in the hot tub, they dip a Russian energy drink (it's got illegal ingredients!) into the timing control of the tub, and wake up in 1986. They appear as the same to themselves and each other, but reflections in the mirror, and other people perceive them as their 1986 counterparts. Except for the nephew, who wasn't born yet in 1986. What follows is an interesting look at three people, whose lives haven't been going where they thought they would, view living through their teenage glory day again. The humor is good, if more than a little vulgar. ...

I'm gonna be honest, I'm not sure if this was a good movie or not. I certainly enjoyed it, but it was so very, very bizarre. It's written and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, Amelie, Alien Resurrection), so I supposed that's to be expected. Our hero is Bazil, as a young boy his father was killed by a landmine, later as an adult, he is shot as the innocent bystander of a gun fight, in the head. In the operating room the conversation goes: Doctor: "The bullet is lodged in his brain, if I go in to remove it, there's a fair chance he could die, but if I leave it as it is, he'll constantly be on the brink of death." Nurse: "Better to live on the knife's edge than to die on an operating table." Doctor: "This is philosophy, not medicine, who has a coin to flip?" Coin flips Doctor: "Leaving it in then." Bazil is then left with a tendency to have hallucinations, which can be stopped b...

As you know, I had pretty good things to say about The Losers comic book, so I was really excited to go see the movie this weekend. I wasn't excited because I thought the movie was going to be particularly good , but because the book had a lot of very well laid out action scenes, and a visual presentation that I really wanted to see represented on the screen. In that sense, the movie was a tremendous success, this is definitely a turn off your brain and enjoy the ride kind of show. All of the main characters are well cast, being fairly faithful to their comic counterparts, with two exceptions: One is Aisha, played by Zoe Saldana, doesn't really look like a pakistani child commando all growed up. The other shake up being Idris Elba as Roque, replacing the guy in the comic that I always confused with the team leader Clay (they looked and dressed fairly similar) with a very large black man really worked for me. Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Comedian/John Winchester) pulled off C...

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a Swedish thriller/mystery film. I've got some serious mixed feelings about it. The movie kicks off with Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative reporter, being sued by someone for slander after writing an article accusing him of committing some crimes. He loses the suit because of all his sources disappear, and evidence is presented which shows all of his evidence as fraudulent. Shortly after he's offered a job from a very wealthy retired businessman, Henrik Vanger. Henrik wants Mikael to investigate what happened to his niece who disappeared nearly 40 years prior without a trace. Every year on her birthday, Henrik receives a pressed flower from somewhere in the world, and he is convinced that this is her murderer taunting him. The second Protagonist is Lisbeth Salanger, a hacker/investigator working for a private firm who is originally hired by Vanger to investigate Mikael to see if he was guilty of the libel he was charged with. A little ...

For those of you not in the know, this was the movie that Heath Ledger was filming at the time of his demise. The film wasn't completed at the time, and so for certain portions, his character is played by one of three different actors, being Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law. Of course, none of these men look anything like Ledger, although that's not really an issue given the nature of the film. Dr Parnassus is a two thousand year old monk of sorts, with a gambling problem, and a long time gambling partner in the Devil. Throughout the ages the Devil has approached him, and made various wagers, which is where the good doctor's immortality came from. In the present, Parnassus wanders around performing shows with his daughter, played by Lilly Cole (a relatively new face, who has that same problem that Cristina Ricci does, her face makes her look more like a porcelain doll than a real person), a dwarf played by Vern Troyer, and some other guy who's in love with t...

Okay, so, "Battle Stags" really isn't all you need to know, the battle stags are robotic deer with life-like fur, side mounted missile batteries, rocket flight, and a hidden rectal artillery cannon. Who's still here after that sentence? Okay, what this movie is actually about, is a young science fiction writer, who is the spitting image of the high school nerd with extreme social dysfunction, if nothing else, this movie gets the feeling of being that outcast down better than anything else I have ever seen. So, our hero, Benjamin Purvis wants nothing more than to be great scifi writer, just like his idol, Chevalier. He attends a writer's workshop headlined by Chevalier, and submits one of his stories, Yeast Lords, into the writing contest. Chevalier is pretentious and sleazy to a tee, he's lost touch with what made him write in the first place, now just being about the money, and it's revealed throughout the movie that he hasn't written a story that ...

I was fairly confident from the title of the film that I knew what I was getting into, a martial arts flick with not a lot of effort wasted on the story. That statement is more or less true, but it really doesn't prepare you for the experience. Right with the first opening scene, you're treated to an overwhelming amount of gore, just as much as you'd find in the typical slasher horror flick. To further confuse you, the martial arts scenes are mostly "augmented" with CG weapons, blood, motion blur, and Matrix-esque slow motion segments. Truly the level of ridiculousness present is more akin to something you'd find in an anime. You've got people that move so fast that they disappear, can heal mortal wounds and throw throwing stars with the same rate of fire and velocity as submachine gun rounds. The story was ultimately bland and cliched, although the acting and writing weren't particularly terrible, just nothing we haven't seen in a hundred movie...

This appears to be a time for disappointing sequels, although for awhile there, we got a lot of top tier extremely competent sequels. I guess no trend can be permanent. The first Boondock Saints was one of those rare creations that had just about the optimal amount of everything, it was balanced between being believable, ridiculous, funny, and brutal. Balanced is the last word I would use to describe the sequel. The dialogue is terrible, just about everyone in the movie talks like a middle school bully. There are honest to goodness slapstick comedy moments, such as a mafia liutenant getting smacked in the face with a salami, and then a follow up seen where he's forced to wear headgear and can't speak properly. The tone of the entire movie is just so very different from the original, that it feels like it was made with a different director/writer, with a different vision for what the movie should be. All the more sad, since it's the same writer/director, Troy Duffy,...

The title of this movie is a little misleading, it doesn't have anything to do with a dystopian future where sleep has become a commodity, that you find shady guys in back alleys pandering out of their trench coats. I probably would have liked that movie a little more. Sleep Dealer is about a near future, where all of the manual labor from the US is outsourced to Mexico through telepresence technology. Construction, janitor work, even picking oranges out of trees is all done by robots, which are controlled by people jacked into a computer on the other side of the border. I'm sure this makes sense from the angle that immigrant workers are no longer required to actually immigrate, instead they can stay in their own country and it's easier for the US government to still tax their wages, except it's no longer an income tax, but a telepresence tax of some such. My problem with the concept is that I just can't grasp a world where making and maintaining a fleet of expen...

This one sort of came out of nowhere. It's described on the poster as Doctor Who meets Shaun of the Dead, and that's a pretty apt review. It stars three friends, two of which are uber-nerds, with the last being a cynical "normal" person. The lead is played by Chris O'Dowd (Roy from the IT Crowd) whose particular quirk is time travel. The story starts off with "Ray" getting fired from his job as a "time soldier" at an amusement park. Once our heroes have hit the bar to drown their sorrows is when things get fun. As Ray goes to get the next round of drinks, he encounters a woman who claims to be a time traveling operative, in charge of repairing leaks in the timeline, and she's just so honored to meet such a crucial figure in history. Of course Ray assumes that she's just putting him on at the behest of his friends as a prank. Until he goes back to his table, and then they find the time leak. Basically, it's a fun little romp t...

I forgot to mention these in the previous post. IM2 - I'm going to go see it, it doesn't have to sell me on anything. Downey is still the perfect Tony Stark, smug, cocky, and charming. Two things worth pointing out. First, War Machine, if you're not a comic book fan, you probably just thought "why is there a silver and black Iron Man at the end?" That is War Machine, he's the character Rhodes from the first movie, although now he's played by Don Cheadle, and he's a more militarisitic counterpart to Iron Man. I've never been a huge fan of the Iron Man comic, so I don't know too much about War Machine, other than I always thought it was cool that he had a shoulder mounted chain gun. Second point: the villain this time around is Ripchord, portrayed by Mickey Rourke. The funny thing about Rourke is that every time I see him in a movie, I think that he can't possibly look any worse, and I'm wrong, every single time! Things are not h...