Gran Torino (2009)


Directed by: Clint Eastwood

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, and Christopher Carley

Plot: Walt Kowalski is a widower who holds onto his prejudices despite the changes in his Michigan neighborhood and the world around him. Kowalski is a grumpy, tough-minded, unhappy an old man, who can't get along with either his kids or his neighbors, a Korean War veteran whose prize possession is a 1972 Gran Torino he keeps in mint condition. When his neighbor Thao, a young Hmong teenager under pressure from his gang member cousin, tries to steal his Gran Torino, Kowalski sets out to reform the youth. Drawn against his will into the life of Thao's family, Kowalski is soon taking steps to protect them from the gangs that infest their neighborhood. Taken from www.imdb.com.


Post-1990, Clint Eastwood's career as a director has been pretty mediocre. Oh sure his swan song to the Man-With-No-Name in "Unforgiven" was wonderful, and "Space Cowboys", "Flags of Our Fathers", and "Letters From Iwo Jima" were all pretty damn good, and I seem to be the only person who thought "Million Dollar Baby" was just a poor story adapted for shock value and tear jerker potential. But for the most part Eastwood's career since the 90s has been composed of the best movies you've never cared about.

I want to say I was optimistic going into this film. I want to tell you that knowing Clint Eastwood is a capable writer/director/actor I knew I would see something good. I cannot tell you this however, as it would be bullshit. I came in expecting another great film that I'm only going to watch once and never see again.

In this story we follow the character of Walt Kowalski. An old and extremely angry man with a family full of selfish fuckheads that he doesn't care about. His wife has just died and the once quiet happy neighborhood he's lived in all his life has now become a ghetto dominated by Asian-Americans (mainly Hmong people.) It becomes fairly obvious in the first establishing shots of the neighborhood that Walt is a dying breed as his is the only house on the block that isn't in shambles and still has a decent lawn.

Walt's next-door neighbor Thao (Bee Vang) gets wrapped up with his cousin Spider's (Doua Moua) gang and as his initiation attempts to steal Walt's 1972 Gran Torino. Naturaly he fails as you don't fuck with the Eastwood and the gang attempts to punish him for messing up. This culminates with Walt stepping out into the yard and holding an M-1 Garand into of the gangster's face and proclaiming the cranky old bastard mantra "Get off my lawn." Followed by no less than 3 paragraphs of racial slurs.

As thanks for saving Thao and as punishment for trying to steal Walt's car and thus dishonoring the family, Thao's sister Sue (Ahney Her) volunteer's him to work to pay back for what he has done. Walt sets Thao to working on the house across the street from his own and ultimately starts to warm up to Thao and Sue and ultimately becomes closer to their family than he is to his own. He sets out to give Thao an oppurtunity to do something other than end up in prison by helping find a job and stand up for himself. I can't reveal more of the plot without giving it away but if you've ever seen an Eastwood film you can surely figure out where things go from there.


I don't think I have to tell you what kind of performance Eastwood gives. In a world where once magnificent actors like Robert Deniro and Al Pacino are aging like mayonaisse in the sun it's good to see that Clint is as good as he ever was. Not only is Walt himself a dying breed but the type of character is also going the way of the dodo. He's essentially a modern day Archie Bunker, a prejudiced old man that not only isn't a skinhead but actually is rather good hearted.

It's made rather clear early on that Walt isn't actually a racist as he seems to hate all people equally but people still seem to throw fits over his use of racial slurs, even if he does spread it across the board for white people as well as minorities. Walt is a man that judges people as individuals and uses insults as terms of endearment (the scenes with Walt and his barber illistrate this perfectly.) except in the cases when he wants to insult someone which is usually when he's got a gun pointed at them. So savor this character, we'll probably never see one like him for a long long time.

Christopher Carley is another milestone as a Catholic Priest that was apparentl y very close to Walt's wife before she died. He is keeping his promise to get Walt to come to confession. Thought the character is portrayed as 27 and Carley himself is 31 he looks to be about 19 and manages to play a much more down to Earth character than a typical priest/minister in a film. Carley serves as a play at Walt's faith throughout the film, clearly the man sees himself going to hell and sees no way around it and Carley seems to ground him and force him to face himself at several key points.

Bee Vang and Ahney Her are both wonderful despite what people say about their acting. All of the Hmong people in this film have no previous acting experience (aside from antagonist Doua Moua) but they do wonderfully. The real problem is that their speech patterns seem very forced and unnatural which is taken as bad acting. To me it just sounded like the speech patterns of people who speak English as a second language and fit with the characters, it's far more apparent with Ahney than it is with Bee. Ignoring their speech patterns though they are both well-fleshed out characters that form a very realistic dynamic with Eastwood, you get the impression that they are to Walt the children he wishes he had instead of his selfish asshole sons.


"Gran Torino" is a drama, but it's full of humor which I've always felt is the backbone of a good film no matter what genre or subject matter. Almost all of the laughs come from Walt, and it's not over anything meaning to be particularly silly or jokey. Walt is just simply one of those characters so cantankerous that you just start laughing when someone says or does something as you know his reaction will be priceless. Especially during the time where he's serving as a mentor to Thao, particularly a scene where he takes him into the barber shop to teach him how men talk.

Of course Walt is also probably the most badass old men in all of the land. Eastwood is still in Man-With-No-Name mode for most of the movie, including his trademark tobacco spitting chain smoking moments and his way of kicking the shit out of people about 3-4 times his junior. This still doesn't take awa from the more dramatic aspects of the character as you see he is a very sad and tortured man that's angry at the world for all of his problems.

The movie switches from lighthearted to dramtic rather seamlessly and the scene where it does is intensely powerful even if the source of drama comes from the old book of tricks that everybody uses. And the ending is equally moving even if you do see it coming from a mile away.

If anything this film just solidified my point that Eastwood needs to make "Dirty Harry 6." Sure he's said this is his last film, but he said that with "Million Dollar Baby" too.


It's powerful, moving, and emotional but not alienating to the audience like most Oscar bait seems to be. In the same way that "Unforgiven" was a swan song for the Man With No Name, "Gran Torino" is a swan song for the tortured old man that just wants to feel like he's done something good with is life.

I give "Gran Torino" a 5 out of 5. I highly reccomend seeing this in theaters.

My Bloody Valentine 3-D (2009)

Directed by: Patrick Lussier

Starring: Jensen Ackles, Jaime King, Kerr Smith

Other Actors of Note: Tom Atkins

Plot: Tom (Ackles) returns to his hometown on the tenth anniversary of the Valentine's night massacre that claimed the lives of 22 people. Instead of a homecoming, however, Tom finds himself suspected of committing the murders, and it seems like his old flame (King) is the only one will believes he's innocent. Taken from www.imdb.com.


Ever since the remake of "Dawn of the Dead" came out I've been saying that rather than pissing people off by remaking good movies that the industry should instead remake bad movies and it took nearly five years but Hollywood seems to have finally taken the hint. Now we've got remakes of "My Bloody Valentine", "Friday the 13th", "Night of the Demons", and "Last House on the Left." At this rate I expect a remake of "Chopping Mall" in 2015.

You see, a good movie has lots of die-hard fans that love it so naturally even a good remake will never be able to live up to the original, but a bad movie is perfect for remakes as it won't piss anybody off except the psychopaths who are stupid enough to refer to them as "masterpieces."

The original "My Bloody Valentine" was a cash-in on the holiday slasher movie trend of the era and seeing as Halloween, Christmas, New Years, Mother's Day, and Friday the 13th were taken they picked from the remaining holidays of Easter, Thanksgiving, The 4th of July, Valentine's Day, and Arbor Day and decided that Valentine's was the least retarded one left.
You'll note that Easter ("Peter Rottentail"), Thanksgiving (Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving" trailer), and the 4th of July ("Uncle Sam") have been done but Arbor Day remains sadly lacking in the gigantic psychotic deformed retard with an axe category.

Now "My Bloody Valentine" wasn't a "good" movie by a longshot, even the recent release that features all the additional gore effects and cut scenes is at best blissfully mediocre. The good is that it has an iconic killer (a miner in a gas mask with a pickaxe), a memorable kill (a woman in a dryer), and a good scare (a bunch of miners' coveralls on hooks that drop all around a frightened woman as she runs around amongst them, screaming.) Fortunately for fans of the original (and I use the term "fans" lightly) all these things made the transation, and more fortunately than that, nothing else did!

The story remains roughly the same, a bunch of miners get caught in a cave-in because of someone else's mistake (in this film it's Jensen Ackle's Tom, a character in the original which was called TJ) of the 5 men in the mine only one is left alive when they are rescued, that man is Harry Warden (in this version Harry killed the other men to conserve oxygen, in the original it was because they were in there for weeks and he ate them.) Harry then goes on a rampage to get revenge (Original Harry's body count is 2, this Harry's bodycount is 22) and kills a bunch of people with a pickaxe on Valentine's Day. 10 years later on another Valentine's Day a man in a miner suit is killing people, is it possible that Harry Warden has returned?! (*Gasp*)


This movie has the usual cast of teen heart-throbs that plague your average horror movie with their shocking stupidity. But the real surprise is how well they work especially since they have to play their characters in two different time-spans 10 years apart.

First there's Jensen Ackles who plays Tom. I remember Ackles most for his work on "Smallville" where he was bland, unconvincing, and outshined by Allison Mack and Tom Welling. (Which is like saying that you were outrun by a crippled 3-toed sloth.) Jensen is honestly one of the finer parts in the movie. In the prologue of the story he comes across as a dumb kid which doesn't sound so remarkable but when you see the character as an adult the contrast is well done. He also does a good job of playing Tom in a manner where you're not sure whether he's the killer or not. At times he seems sane and at times he seems crazy and you believe both equally.

Kerr Smith's transition from teenager to adult works as wel but it's more physical. He opts for a beard and mustache and acts like an even bigger asshole. Apparently in the 10 years since the massacre, Axel has become the Sheriff and I must say I have never hated a hero charcter more. Axel really is a prick and it's easy to see why he's one of the suspects for being the killer.

Jaime King plays Sarah, aka the "last girl" of the movie. She's definitely much more prolific than the original's who mostly just screamed help the entire movie but both versions are just reflections of common trends of the times. Fortunately Sarah's last girl moments only take place in the final 10 minutes of the film.

Anyhow, fuck the Tiger Beats cast, Tom fucking Atkins is in this movie! That's right, Tom Atkins, the man who's played a cop (and died horribly in that role) in just about every movie he's in returns to do the same. Does Atkins do anything new that he didn't do in "Bruiser", or "Night of the Creeps", or "Halloween 3", or "Maniac Cop?" No, but you know what, that's not the point. Atkins gets typcast for a reason, because he's fucking good at what he does and it's good to see him still doing genre films.

Finally let's talk about the miner. The original Harry Warden was some skinny Canadian guy with a beard who we saw out of gear for all of 10 seconds (cause lets be honest, once the killer is shown in their mask and costume the actor becomes a glorified stunt-man.

Well Richard John Walters plays the new Harry and he comes across as a large scary and extremely angry man. You find no trouble in believing that this man would get really pissed and off a small northwestern town. He also plays an intimidating and imposing figure in miner gear.


So here's the question. Is the 3-D gimmicky? I am going to answer that question with another question. Is 3-D ever not gimmicky? No less this is not the old style 3-D where the movie remains normal with the exception of somebody throwing something at the screen every now and then.

Oh don't get me wrong, the audience gets tons of pickaxes flying toward it and gun barrels pointing out at them but the 3D extends to the entire film. It's as if you're actually watching something occur in real-life, there are dimensions and depths to things and it really does make the entire experience different.

As mentioned before the top-shelf gore effects were recycled for this movie. We've lost the guy drowned in boiling water unfortunately as well as the guy hit in the head with a nail gun (which never really made sense in context to begin with) but the pickaxe that goes through the back of a man's head and comes out the other side with his eye on the tip remains, as doe the woman in a dryer, and it's also the first movie to ever show the skewering of a midget with a pickaxe.


For all intents and purposes "My Bloody Valentine 3-D" takes what the original did and ups the ante. Instead of through clumsy flashback the opening is told through newspaper clippings and audio clips and evidence photos with our first peek at actual footage being Harry Warden waking up really pissed off. This works better but I don't think anything will ever beat the original film's exposition of Harry screaming bloody murder as soon as the light from the search and rescue team hit his face and knawing on a severed human leg like it's a chicken drumstick.

The story is typical paint by numbers slasher film. (The wronged man seeking revenge slasher film, not the large muscular deformed man-child killing people just 'cuz slasher film.) The movie tells you who the killer is in the first 30 minutes and then spends the rest of the film pitching red herrings at you like a trainer at Sea World. Admittedly one of the aformentioned acquatic creatures is actually really convincing and the exposition of it is rather bullshit. I'm told that several different endings were filmed and I wouldn't be surprised if the one they went with wasn't the one in the script. I'm sure the DVD will tell all.

This movie also features the longest nude scene in a movie probably ever, I think more than porn. Betsy rue spends roughly 15-20 minutes on-screen without a stitch of clothing. Do you hear that? That's the sound of this movie single-handedly topping the 80s.


Don't come into this movie expecting anything more than a good time at the movies. But then again if you come into a 3-D movie expecting more than cheap fun then you need your head exhamined anyway.

I give "My Bloody Valentine 3-D" a 5 out of 5. If you can see it in 3D, do see.

The Spirit (2008)


Directed by: Frank Miller

Starring: Gabriel Macht, Eva Mendes, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johanssen, Sarah Paulson

Other Actors of Note: Louis Lombardi

Plot: Down these mean streets a man must come. A hero born, murdered, and born again. When a Rookie cop named Denny Colt returns from the beyond as The Spirit, a hero whose mission is to fight against the bad forces from the shadows of Central City. The Octopus who kills anyone unfortunate enough to see his face who has other plans. He's going to wipe out the entire city. The Spirit tracks this cold hearted killer from the city's rundown warehouses, to the damp catacombs, to the windswept waterfront all the while facing a bevy of beautiful women who either want to seduce, love or kill the masked crusader. Taken from www.imdb.com.


This movie is probably one of the least anticipated films of all time. I think Eli Roth could offer to make an Austin Powers movie and people would ask for that before Frank Miller's The Spirit. I went into this movie having not even the slightest idea of what to expect.

Having taken a crash course on The Spirit the month prior to seeing the film I was with the diehard fans of the series that Frank Miller was probably going to ruin it. The problem is... he really for the most part didn't. In fact most of the stuff in this movie are the product of Will Eisner's imagination, not Frank Miller's.

Anyhow it's the story of Denny Colt a seemingly invincible vigilante who fights crime in Central City. He clashes against his mortal enemy The Octopus and his childhood love Sand Serif.


First let's get to the meat and potatoes of this review. Gabriel Macht, who did an excellent job alongside then unkown actor Colin Farrell in the bullshit Jesse James action-western "American Outlaws" as Jesse's brother Frank, is the perfect choice for Denny Colt/The Spirit but only because Terrence Hill is far too old to play the role.

Mact just seems to capture the serious yet lighthearted determination of The Spirit perfectly. The only problem with Macht's performacne is that he plays up the whole womanizing aspect of the Spirit's personality a bit much but I suppose that's the fault of the screenwriters, not the actor.

Samuel L. Jackson is found the top, went over it, and then went back and beat his previous record of over-the-top acting. His performance as The Octopus is one of the biggest flaws this movie has and it's just another bad Samuel L. Jackson role.

Scarlett Johanssen, Eva Mendez, and all the other women in this movie are good to look at but serve little other point. Even Sand Seref (Mendez) who is arguably the heroine of the movie doesn't really do much of any importance.

Louis Lombardi is particularly good as a group of clone henchmen with a high mortality rate that are actually from Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns." He's very amusing throughout if nothing else for seeing the many ways they get killed.


The aesthetics were the main thing complained about with this movie as it goes with the "Sin City" visual design. I don't know why this is such a big deal, the movie is still in color and aside from The Spirit's tie and shoes looking like they've been dipped in glow-in-the-dark paint it never gets weird.

"Sin City" was a series obviously heavily inspired by the seres even if Frank Miller decided to throw in a lot of hookers and dismemberment. I mean sure the style is a bit overdone, but it's 1940s noir, what would you have it look like?


Now I am sick and tired of hearing about the complaining about this movie. Let's cover teh first problem about the Spirit being dressed in black. Yes the Spirit in the comic was blue, but he was only blue because that's how colorization worked. The Spirit was no more blue than Batman or Venom. He was blue only because it contrasted against a black background and didn't bleed as much.

Also let's address the Octopus. It would have been really inconvenient to have Samuel L. Jackson standing off-screen the entire movie holding a hand out. He's at least wearing the Octopus' trademark gloves. But Dr. Klaw is more than a gauntlet and a white cat, Wolverine doesn't wear yellow spandex, Spider-man has organic web shooters, and you can see The Octopus. Fucking live with it. Now the fact that The Ocotopus is an invincible black pimp/samurai/nazi well... that's another thing entirely.

One of Frank Miller's dumb changes is that he's taken the fact that the Spirit can take a lot more damage and heal faster than the average human due to the chemical that killed and brought him back from the dead to mean that he's apparently The fucking Crow or some shit. Also despite what people may think one of the Spirit's 3 origins in the comics did involve The Octopus being affected by the same formula as The Spirit.

Miller off course drops in the aformentioned clones, a couple of hookers, and a couple shots of Eva Mendez' ass but the cheesy lines, over-the-top noir, tedious inner-monologue, sick yet strangely PG gore, acrobatic nonsense, over-the-top fight scenes, and bizarre characters with stupid names were all Eisner's creation, not Miller's.

Though there is a scene where The Octopus and Silken Floss torture The Spirit (which includes the melting of the world's most adorable kitten) and it's more than a little strange to see a black man and a Jewish girl dressed up like Nazis and one shot of Scarlett Johanssen where the background is a giant picture of Adolph Hitler came across as particularly wrong. The entire scene is just out of fucking nowhere and the most detrimental part to the whole picture

But you know what? Miller's changes were minimal and most of what appears on screen is straight-up Will Eisner. In fact I'm of the opinion that Miller did quite a good job of bringing the character to the screen.

But then again, what do I know? I liked Alec Baldwin's "The Shadow."


In a year of excellent comic book movies, "The Spirit" comes up as a bit of a weak entry and it's not a great movie, but don't take that to mean that it's a bad movie. It's fun, tongue-in-cheek, and entertaining action-noir movie.

I give "The Spirit" a 3 out of 5. It's not great but I imagine it will be brought back to the surface as a cult-classic in a few years.

Yes Man (2008)

Directed by: Peyton Reed

Starring: Jim Carrey, Zooey Deschanel

Other Actors of Note: Bradley Cooper, John Michael Higgins, Danny Masterson, Terence Stamp

Plot: A guy challenges himself to say "yes" to everything for an entire year.

Time to revisit the ol' abusive spouse again. If you recall from my review of "How To Lose Friends and Alienate People" review I desperately want to like romantic comedies but with the acception of "Garden State", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", and "Shaun of the Dead" I'm hard-pressed to find a post-Julia Roberts/Richard Gere romantic comedy that doesn't make me want to gouge out my eyes with forks.

From what I understand "Yes Man" is based on a book but from what else I understand the only thing that's the same is that they both tell the tale of a guy who decides to only say "Yes." Sounds like the autobiography of Samuel L. Jackson's career to me.

Anyhow this movie is about Carl Allen, a negative jackass that lets life pass him by until he meets up with a former acquaintence who invites him to a self-help seminar where he is convinced into a "covenant" that he must say "yes" to EVERYTHING. When he tries to say no, bad things start to happen to him.

So yes, it sounds a lot like "Liar, Liar."

Jim Carrey is not so much a man as he is a force of nature. Oh sure you can hate him all you want but just like a hurricane he's gonna keep rushing in year after year and doing his own thing. In this day and age it's hard to remember what a big name Carrey used to be before he became a "serious" actor.

This is what I consider to be a return to form for Carrey, some may say that's a bad thing but I disagree. As much as I've loved "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", "The Majestic", "Lemony Snickett's A Series of Unfortunate Events", "Bruce Almighty", "Man on the Moon", and the criminally underrated "The Truman Show" I've wanted a return to the spastic rubberfaced lunatic performance that made movies like "The Mask", "Dumb and Dumber", and "The Cable Guy" as entertaining as they were. And after the fairly mediocre "Fun With Dick and Jane", the double threat of "The Grinch That Stole Christmas" and "Horton Hears a Who", and the horrible "The Number 23" I think everybody else was too.

Carrey looks like he just walked off the set of "Liar, Liar" and decided to do another movie. His performane is the kind you would have expected from any of his 90s comedies, but with the power of an accomplished actor behind them. He has that same spastic and hyper edge but he's toned it down so it's not annoying like it used to be. Carrey keeps the audience constantly entertained and keeps the laughs coming without becoming tedious.

Zooey Deschanel redeems herself for the beyond terrible performance she gave in "The Happening." She still has that deer in the headlights thing going on but she shows the capacity to use other facial expressions and tones of voice as well as emotions and seems less like a soul-less android sent to Earth to enslave humanity.

Not only does Dechanel manage to seem like a human being, she's actually quite charming as Allison, a character that seems to be more than a little bit like Clementine from "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." The fact that she looks like Katy Perry doesn't hurt.

One of the more memorable performances is by Rhys Darby as Carrey's boss Norman. Sure the character is essentially David Brent from "The Office" but to out-Ricky-Gervais Ricky Gervais is qutie a remarkable feat.

"Yes Man" is essentially "Liar, Liar" by way of plot, yes. But the difference is that Jim Carrey is a better actor at this point and the script is 150 times better. Honestly I think this was made as an "adaptation" of the book simply to avoid a lawsuit.

Every moment kept me laughing out loud even if the humor was more than a little sophomoric. What's more the movie manages to be fun even when it finally hits "the wall." If you've ever seen a comedy of this type then you know what the wall is, it's when the movie hits that point where the comedy has been stretched as far as the script writer feels it can be and hits a wall of drama that drags it down until the end of the movie.

The beautiful thing is that "Yes Man" doesn't hit the wall as soon as you expect and when it finally does it does so gracefully. Where most movies spiral downward into a pit of drama and emotion, "Yes Man" decides to fling a bunch more gags on the way down and while it's not as fun as earlier scenes it's more fun then we're used to.

While movies like this are usually hit and miss with the jokes this one seemed to succeed time after time with my personal favorite being when Jim Carrey talks a jumper down from a window ledge by serenading him with "Jumper" by Third Eye Blind whereupon all the onlookers and the jumper break out in song. (It sounds stupid as hell but it had the theater roaring with laughter.)

While "Yes Man" suffers from the romantic comedy formula it seems to try and make the process as painless as possible and be fun even when it's gotten to that serious point. It's a nice comeback for Jim Carrey's comedy performances and a good movie even if it barely counts as an adaptation of the book it's based on.

I give "Yes Man" a 5 out of 5. It's worth it.