PlanBFromOuterSpace

This reminds me of when Chuck D came to talk at my school in February '05. My college (Slippery Rock University of PA) had some...interesting festivities lined up for Black History Month, so during the Q&A portion I asked Mr. D if he'd seen the activities that were planned for the next few weeks, and he had, which then led me to ask if he ALSO thought it was strange that someone thought it was a good idea to end this month of celebration of African-American culture with a special screening of "Soul Plane". He took it well, responding that having HIM there must have been their way of trying to balance things out and that whoever was responsible for the "Soul Plane" idea probably wasn't there with us on that night.

Even "Chicago", which I despised, wasn't BAD, it was just a horrible, horrible choice for Best Picture. It was fifteen minutes of story stretched out to two hours but very well done on a technical level, so it at least deserves to be remembered for that, but I don't think "Crash" would really be remembered AT ALL if it hadn't won, because aside from the PSA-ishness of it's message, it looks and feels very by-the-numbers.

I saw someone start another thread about this, so I thought I'd give this a bump!

This is one of those movies that my theater never got, that we knew we'd never get because there are about 20 black moviegoers in my town, but I'll be damned if we didn't have the poster up in our break room for about a year and a half. I'm not sure which one stayed up longer, that or "El Cantante"...

I get that, but like you said, the execution was pretty terrible. There's a biiiiiig difference between a) leaving things open for the viewer and pulling the plug on a storyline JUST as it's getting interesting. In this film, we see everyone acting like assholes until something happens that makes them question their assholishness, and then they disappear. It's almost like one continuous feature-length second act. And then the climax of the film is one of maybe three of the genuinely decent people in the movie going completely off the rails and doing something so out-of-left-field for no other reason than EVERYONE in this movie has to suffer. Speaking of which, I remember watching the Oscars that year, and there was some sort of interpretive dance performance set to the nominees for best picture, and this one had people all covered in ash or something coming out of the wreckage with the burnt car and everything. All I could think was "It sure is nice that 'Land of the Dead' is getting recognized by the Academy, even if it IS just for Best Original Song...wait, what?".

I also just remembered that it seemed like when anything interesting happened in any particular arc, that story would just end and we'd never see or hear from the characters ever again. For instance, Matt Dillon's a total prick towards the beginning, but then he has this "holy shit" moment when saving Thandie Newton from the crash when he realizes that she would almost rather DIE than be saved by this guy that traumatized her early on, and it seems like this changes him a little or that he's going to re-think his ways. That would have been interesting to see, but instead, his story is dropped entirely. Speaking of that, we don't really see Newton after this either and how it affected her, do we? Yeah, the movie's full of that.

It's like "'I'm Not Racist, But...': The Movie".

While the movie overall had an After School Special vibe to it, the thing that bugged me most was that the ONLY thing anyone seems to be talking about in the film is race. They weren't real people having real conversations at all, because no matter how a conversation started, it turned to that and then people yelling at each other. "What should we have for dinner?" "Does it matter?!?!? You're ashamed to tell your mother you're sleeping with a Hispanic woman!" "Who's picking up the kids from school today?" "I don't know, but all black people are carjackers!" I might be exaggerating, but not by much.

Oh Jesus, I just remembered "Meteor Man" too. Still, a Shaq Superman-related vanity project trumps all.

I think the Mandarin twist was actually a really clever political move, as I can't remember if it's the Chinese or North Korean government (maybe both) that have flat out said that if you portray the country or it's citizens in a villainous or negative light, you're either retarded, a criminal, or a retarded criminal. By giving us a Mandarin that really isn't Mandarin, voila, the film gets a release in China and a couple hundred million more in the bank! A lot of folks have said that it sort of pulls a "Batman Begins", but I much prefer this comedic coked-out clown to whatever Ken Watanabe was supposed to be in that other film.

*SPOILERS* I think Kingsley was sort of playing a version of the real-life Robert Downey Jr. that may have existed had he never turned himself around.

Just bumping this one, as I just suggested it on For your Inconsideration! With "Man of Steel" on the way, this would be perfect!

Ah yes, Reb Brown, probably the second greatest Captain America ever!

There's still room though for "untold tales" via flashback, but I'm not sure how necessary that would be. After the Winter Soldier appeared in the comics, there were a lot of flashbacks and new stories set in the Golden Age that retroactively turned Bucky into more of bad-ass, but movie Bucky has already been established as being a bit more hardcore. It was a big revelation in the comic that even Cap wasn't in on that while HE was the one that everyone was paying attention to, it was the kid sidekick that was running around behind the scenes snapping all the necks.

Come on, we all know "Max Keeble's Big Move" has it coming. For too fucking long, no one's gone after that sacred cow...

"Captain America" is my favorite of the "Phase 1" films, and it's highly re-watchable. Even though it's bookended by modern day segments, I think it was still pretty ballsy to essentially make this a period piece. I wanted to see an immediate sequel to Cap MORE than I wanted a third Iron Man, second Thor, or another Avengers.

I liked this one quite a bit. Also in this film: The guy that plays the Japanese guy in every movie with a Japanese guy in it that you've ever seen, including Dolph's classic "Showdown in Little Tokyo".

It's as if they already had the script laying around and just subbed Elektra in, but didn't really bother to tailor it to the character we saw in Daredevil at all.

One of the writers on CHUD.com wrote a review consisting of five words: "Like Being Raped By Clowns". I think if you slapped that on the DVD cover, you might actually move a few copies.

Well, a bad movie decision. I'm not sure she was regretting her decision of being my roommate or anything. Huh, actually this was BEFORE that. Jesus, I moved in with a girl that made me take her to "Australia"? I should have known it would be a disaster!

Aside from having the Elektra character in the film, this was one of the most generic theatrically-released action films I can ever remember seeing. I actually liked "Daredevil" quite a bit and was hoping that this would be an extension of that, but nope, it was pretty much it's own thing. It's own boring, boring thing, and just a waste of an opportunity to really do something with what's actually a pretty great character...at least in the comics.

In my years of research (translation: working at a theater), I've learned that old people will almost never speak bad about historical dramas, particularly war movies, regardless of actual quality. Actually, this one time, there was an old guy that expressed his displeasure with "Four Feathers", where he explained in an "I'm not racist, but..." sort of way that he thought the African natives were portrayed too heroically in the film, but that's about it. ANYWAY, if we hate movies like this, we're terrible, terrible Americans...or something. Don't even get me started on "Act of Valor"...

This movie was just tonally schizophrenic, like it couldn't decide what it wanted to be. I got dragged to this on Thanksgiving night by my then-roommate, who made a once-in-a-lifetime admission to making a bad decision afterward, so it even failed on a chick flick level. Anyway, the first third of this thing kind of felt like a goofy 40's romantic comedy before becoming a Western in the middle, which I actually kind of liked, and then tried to be "Gone With the Wind" for the final stretch, failing hilariously. I mean, it kind of would feel like one of those epics, at least in the sense that it was marking off the period drama checklist, but then the aborigines would appear to remind you (in case you forgot) that you were in Australia. It was awfully distracting. i just can't stay mad at Hugh Jackman though. I just can't...

Wouldn't the future-telling Game Gear have been able to know that there WAS no future for the Game Gear? It's like one of those "be careful what you wish for" situations, like those poor, poor cyclops...es from "Krull".

Yeah, that was the only reason I knew who the guy was, so it was at least kind of good timing on Boll's part to have the guy in a movie around the time that Basterds came out.