OK, first I really wanted to do a 10WMR for this movie, but after viewing it there was just no way I could condense everything about this flick in just ten words.

First things first lets get you up to speed.

Courtesy of wikipedia:

Cris Johnson (Nicolas Cage) is a clairvoyant living under an assumed name, Frank Cadillac, in Las Vegas. He has a minor magic show at one of the hotels, but he makes his living at “low stakes” gambling against the casinos. He manages to stay beneath the radar, never revealing his gift: the ability to see two minutes into his own future.

During one of his magic shows, two FBI agents observe him, although he doesn’t realize that’s who they are or that they are even after him. One of them, Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore), is convinced Cris is the key to help the FBI stop terrorists from detonating a stolen nuclear bomb. All the information she has obtained until this point proves Cris has some unexplainable ability to see into the future.

That’s right ladies and gentlemenen, the man can see two minutes into his own future, which in and of itself is a pretty cool ability. I liked the way that they portrayed this on film by letting Chris (Cage) basically walk around and sort of run a scenario for a given situation, see the outcome of it and just keep going until he gets it right. The simple fact that Hollywood hasn’t turned this premise into a bad TV show yet just baffles me.

Now all of that seems cool until you use actors that are either not really trying or walking around the movie ” looking royally pissed off, like she got tricked into making the movie on a sucker bet.” If there was one thing that I could have changed about this movie it would have been the cheesy hair that Nicolas Cage was walking around with. For a man that can see his own future, you’d think he could see that that haircut wasn’t going to work out for him.

One of the other things that really stood out in this movie is the bad guys in it. I call them bad guys because none of them had any names, no country of origin, and no real reason to be terrorizing the US other than the fact that that’s what their roles called for. Apparently when writing this movie, when it came time to cast/write for the antagonists, the writers must have called up either Bad Guys R Us., Terrorists Inc., or Rent A Thug – since all of the “Villains” looked the same and were about as generic as the expendable black guy.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “naNye I thought you said this was a Movie You Should See?”

See that’s the cool thing about this movie, it’s one of those rare flicks that has a decent premise and the overall acting isn’t horrible so what you end up with is a movie that you can just shut your mind off and watch. It’s a film that’s so cheesy that it’s actually awesome. Therefore here at ATE we have now created a new term to refer to these priceless pieces of cinema: Chawesome.

It’s cheesy, has corny ass dialogue, very dated special effects, and it’s a whole lot of fun. In 1980 Producer Dino De Laurentis released the intentionally campy flick, Flash Gordon, and it bombed.

But years later the film is a cult classic and comic book fans look at the movie fondly for it’s tongue-in-cheek presentation and rocking soundtrack by the rock group Queen. Anyone who has seen the old 30s and 40s Flash Gordon movie serials or ever read the Flash Gordon comics will see the dedicated homage that this movie is to a much loved character and universe. Flash (Sam Jones) ends up on the planet Mongo by pure chance with the lovely Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) and the misunderstood scientist Dr. Hans Zarkov (Topol), who had built a spaceship to travel to the source of what was causing violent natural phenomena on Earth. This leads them to being captured by Ming the Merciless (Max Von Sydow) who is emperor of Mongo, a planet that is an imperial police state much like Nazi Germany. The group get caught up in an adventure to bring about the downfall of the evil Ming. This flick is a lot of fun if you go along for the very cheesy ride that it is. The design of the film is pleasing to the eye with bright colors very reminiscent of the comic books but this is not for little children as there is some elements that might be scary to a child and there is a fair amount of sexuality. It also stars Timothy Dalton and fanboys will spot many others from various sci-fi flicks in this one. Check it out–this is a good time!

Until next time….Peace—

This movie was on this weekend and it made me remember when a comedy movie was actually…oh what’s the word I’m looking for…oh yes funny.

In case you’ve never seen this movie (shame on you), the premise is a simple one:

Wikipedia says (don’t you just love them)

The film begins with Navin Johnson (Martin), apparently homeless, directly addressing the camera and telling his story. He is the adopted white son of black sharecroppers, who grows to adulthood naïvely unaware of the fact of his adoption. He stands out in his family not just because of his skin color, but also because of his lack of rhythm. One night, he hears a song by Lawrence Welk on the radio, and his feet start moving with the urge to dance. He decides to hitchhike to St. Louis, from where the song was broadcast

From this point on the movie continues down a road of misunderstandings and naiveté that only one of the greats like Martin could pull off. Some would say that the movie is a bit cheesy, but I say I don’t mind pure silliness like this when it’s delivered with expert timing.

And shepherds we shall be
For Thee, my Lord, for Thee
Power hath descended forth from Thy hand
That our feet may swiftly carry out Thy command
So we shall flow a river forth to Thee
And teeming with souls shall it ever be
In nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti

So I finally broke down and rented Smokin’ Aces this weekend and I gotta say that I was highly disappointed. The plot made absolutely no sense whatsoever and the cast while interesting, really did nothing for me. The only thing that sort of made up for the lack of direction that was this tragedy of a movie was the ending. I say all of this to make a point. The point is that many times, it would appear that the Hollywood machine would want us to believe that just because a film has a number of big name stars in it, we should excuse poor plot development because Alicia Keys is playing a bi-sexual hit woman.

What does all of this have to do with today’s pick. In a word everything. The movie I picked today is an older film (limited release in 1999) but to me does everything right in the form of a senseless action flick.

In this movie, what you end up with is a “guy” movie with a lot killing, violence, and foul language. But what you also get is a film with a semi-plausible story instead of random action scenes pieced together with just a hint of plot.

When you have a action/revenge/caper flick, everything needs to at least make sense on some level. With the Boondock Saints what you have is two brothers becoming vigilante killers after they happen to kill three mob soldiers in self defense. What follows is a story that makes you ask yourself, “if you go out and rid the world of criminals by killing them, are you any better than the criminals you dispatched?“