VIDEODRONE

By only

Monday January 7, 2008

NEW MOVIE MONDAYS
3:10 To Yuma
You should probably be able to tell by the excellent cast and zero Oscar buzz that this movie fell somewhat flat. Yup, the Bale sauce wasn’t as spicy as it usually is (we could care less) and the Russell Crow charm didn’t really translate well to “bad guy”. And then No Country For Old Men came out, and actually reinvented the western, so yeah, prairie oysters for this one. With one exception: Ben Foster delivers what is easily one of the best performances of ’07. Right up there with Javier Bardem and, we assume, Daniel Day Lewis. The movie is completely worth watching because of him and his bad-ass white coat. Otherwise, horse apples.


Eagle vs. Shark
This movie was constantly touted as a New Zealand version of Napoleon Dynamite, so naturally we were expecting heaps of incredible sweeping shots of snow capped mountains and non-stop gorgeous scenery and little people, like in Willow. Well helooooo disappointment. There were hardly ANY mountains in the entire movie! What gives? And no midgets? Are you sure you guys are from New Zealand? Oh, well, yeah with those ridiculous accents and not enough brains to realise that anything remotely resembling Napoleon Dynamite is a bad idea, the only other place you could possibly be from is Australia. We’re told the two are different places. Anyways, Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords is in this which makes it somewhat worth while, but he’s got a mullet, so that pretty much sums it up.


Sunshine
We liked how this movies starts, already part way in on a mission to restart the dying sun by firing a nuclear payload into its heart. Danny Boyle’s sci-fi thriller is possibly the best looking space movie since 2001, and the space walk scene is fucking amazing. But then somewhere around half way through the movie goes from convincing human drama in space to psycho-killer weirdo supernatural ridiculousness with a guy who has harnessed the power of the sun and runs around all blurry, killing the crew like he was Freddy Krueger who just happened to show up in Event Horizon… Actually that sounds pretty good. Quit trying so hard, Danny.


Shoot ‘Em Up
True, this came out last week, so totally not news-worthy, we know. But it’s still worth mentioning because of one pivotal scene: Clive “Turned Down James Bond to Star in This Piece of Crap” Owen and Monica “Remember Me From Those Two Matrix Movies That Sucked?” Belucci are doing it missionary. She’s waaay feeling it, but then a bunch of bad ninja looking guys with machine guns come to kill them. Woah, time to stop fucking and kill these guys, right? Wrong. Clive stands up, naked, and they continue to sex for a minute or two as he kills all the intruders and simultaneously gives MB the sickest orgasm she had since she watched her buddy Jesus die in The Passion of the Christ. In short, yes please.


Deep Water
It’s a really sad thing when regular, good people deceive themselves into doing something fool hearty and super risky. Like this guy, Donald Cromhurst, who in 1968 entered in the Sunday Globe‘s “Sail Solo Around the Globe” contest in hopes of winning some money and the heart of a nation. Unfortunately, he was simply an engineer and mild mannered family man who told everyone he was an experienced sailor when he wasn’t, signed a contract in which he couldn’t back out of or he would have to pay for the boat he had commissioned, and then when things got bad out on the open ocean, he lied about his speed, bearings and location. He got lost and lapped and tried to trick everyone by sneaking in behind the last place boat with the hope of appearing to have finished the race. It didn’t work and he went totally mad and they have footage and audio tapes of it all. Gripping stuff.