"The Campaign" Movie Review

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                 Today's review is of "The Campaign", a new comedy starring Zach Galifianakis and Will Ferrell. It is also directed by the famous Jay Roach. It is about two quirky politicians that are rivals against one another, who happen to be running for a spot as congressman in a district in North Carolina. "The Campaign" was one of my most anticipated comedy's of the summer, mainly because the trailer was actually one of the few comedic trailers that made me laugh out loud numerous times. I do like Will Ferell in certain movies, a lot of them are funny, but then again, I don't like them much. Zach Galifianakis, who I think is very talented repeats himself a lot in the roles he portrays. The trailer looked decieving, it looked like a different role for both of them. I was waiting to see how this movie tackles the subject of politics. Unfortanately, after seeing it, this movie really is just another Will Ferrell flop. Zach Galifianakis' character is a little bit different, but it is too much alike Alan Garner from "The Hangover". This time, he has a little bit more of a brain, and is more developed character wise. Will Ferrell is up to his regular shtick, just doing the loud mouth, red neck guy. Overall, playing an irritating idiot... 
               What I did notice a lot in this movie is Will Ferrell was improvising lines, and a lot of it doesn't work in his movies. Like most Will Ferrell comedies, the delivery is a hit or miss, you will get a brief section that is humorous and funny, but there was a lot of laugh-out-louds for a majority of the movie, and then you will get a dull phase with vulgar humor. Luckily for both of them, even though some of there jokes don't work, they both bring enough heart and life to their characters to make it a little bit more bearable.

               I want to start out saying this movie isn't bad at all by any means, but it is pretty inconsistent, and a little misleading for reasons here and there. This film could have had so much more smart humor, especially in an election year, I thought they would take more digs and they had many opportunities to do that, but never did. They did not make one single Obama or Romney joke, which could have tied in well with the scenarios. Like I said the movie has some very funny,great moments, as in one scene involving this dog that was hysterical. The movie near the end, is very predictable, and you can tell what will happen from the middle of the movie. Near the end, it starts to get super cliched, and not believable. It evolves into this uncentimental, cheesy story. There is a lot of pacing from back and forth from one thing to the next. There may be a time where a lot of jokes hit, and then may be 15-20 minutes of them digging up "scraps" from anything that they can find, so they attempt it. 
                   Another thing bad to apply into any comedy movie, is you don't get to feel for the characters. They do make Zach Galfiianakis likeable in certain spots and Will Ferrell too, but you never care for who wins. So, at the revealing of who wins, you kind of are like "oh great, cool, whatever". I didn't really care who won either way. The writers try to make you care for at least one of the candidates, I actually cared more for the supporting characters (Jason Sudeikis, who plays Will's campaign manager). I did like Jason Sudeikis a lot, I would almost want to see a spin off of him more, and Dylan McDermott, who plays Zach Galfianakis' campaign director. I thought the supporting casts were some of the best parts of this movie. If you like Will Ferrell or Zach Galfianakis' movies, you will probably enjoy this. One misconception, is that if you think from the trailer, this movie will be hilarious, it's not, it's inconsistent and predictable. It does have enough laughs where I say to check it out. 
                   I rate it as one of the weakest comedies of the year because of it's competition, but it's not necessarily bad. A disappointment is it had a lot of potential, but didn't live up to it. "The Campaign" could have been a smarter movie, but mainly was just juvenial humor. It's definitely one of Will Ferrell's better movies. Overall, a descent movie, a fun watch.

Savages Review

 Holy Crap haven't been on here in awhile! Before I start if anyone wants to watch my video review of savages click here AMAZING REVIEW. Anyway guys I haven't done a blog in a long time and so I thought I would get back to it at least for right now because I'm an inconsistent little shit. So, today I have my review for Oliver Stone's new drug/crime flick savages to review. 

Savages follows 2 guys name Ben and Chon who are pot dealers and growers in Laguna Beach, CA. Ben s buddhist and a pacifist and Chon is the brawn (yes that rhymes.) They have a shared girlfriend Ophelia played by the woman of my dreams (besides Mila Kunis of course), Blake Lively. They know about this and are cool with it and O is too they even have a 3 way scene in the movie. One day the Mexican Drug Cartel comes to offer them a deal but Chon says they will double-cross them, so they decline their offer. As you know, most drug cartels get pretty upset over that sort of thing so they kidnap O and hold her hostage. This causes war between the two groups and Ben and Chon vow to get her back.

 Savages has a lot of problems, okay? But dammit, this movie was a lot of DAMN FUN and had a great summer vibe watching this film. Oliver Stone always gets great performances out of his actors even if its Charlie Sheen and this flick is no exception. Ben played by Aaron Johnson is very good and Taylor Kitsch is... Taylor Kitsch. Blake Lively showed that she is a good actress when a good director is present (i.e. the town) and here she is good but had the WORST dialogue but I will get to that later. The supporting cast however, is fantastic. Salma Hayek who I usually find a weak actress was very good and intimidating. Not only was she believable as the head of the cartel but she also a human character and had an emotional story arc and back story. John Travolta has a small part as a DEA agent and he was a lot of fun and had a lot of his travolta-isms excluding his massages in this movie. But the scene stealer was by far Benecio Del Toro. My god is this guy scary. Benecio's character is a guy named Lado who is Salma Hayek's right hand man. Whenever he is on screen he captures your attention and keeps you at the end of your seat because you don't know what limb he will chop off next. There is a confrontation between him and John Travolta that is really amazing because Oliver Stone's direction of that scene combined with Benecio's character and screen presence made it nail bitingly tense. Oliver Stone also makes the romance between the 3 main characters very sexy and provides some nice, steamy, romance amidst all the violence.

 Savages does have some MAJOR problems that prevent from being a fantastic movie. One the dialogue which was co-written by Stone is occasionally unbearable. For example Blake Lively, when talking about her sexual experiences with Chon, she says, "I had orgasms, he had wargasms" THAT IS NOT EVEN A JOKE THAT IS A LINE DELIVERED VERY SERIOUSLY. Also, a lot of people hate Blake Lively's narration but I don't think it's her fault because she had to read the terrible lines of dialogue. The pacing is also off. Sometimes the movie is relentlessly entertaining and fast paced, and other times it is slow and uninteresting. Oliver Stone tries to make up for this with cool visuals but even he seems to be ripping off other director's styles suck as Tarantino when classical music plays when someone is killed and len's flares like J.J. Abrams, however the cinematography is pretty gorgeous. However, the most controversial thing about Savages is the ending. Not giving it away of course, but let's just say the have ending, they say no that's not what reallly happened, and they give you a bait and switch ending which is not as ballsy as the original ending. Most said the ending killed the movie for them and I can see why but overall, I found the ending to satisfying enough to still really enjoy the movie for all it did right. Saying that, the ending is pretty anti-climatic and the original ending fit a lot better with the tone of the movie.

 Overall, Savages is a flawed film, but it's a damn fun one and has some amazing performances and a engaging story and that's hard to find in a lot of summer movies. Despite the major flaws, Savages is one my biggest surprises of the year and one of Oliver Stone's best of the past 5. Savages is a sexy, violent, gritty and all around entertaining Oliver Stone flick that I will actually pick up on Blu-Ray.

                                                            4 Out Of 5 Stars

Don't Afraid Of The Dark Movie Review

  Well, Well. Dont Be Afraid Of The Dark is new the horror film produced by Guillermo Del Toro and stars Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce, and Bailee Madison. It is about a couple played by Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce, who moved in to a old haunted house where Guy Pearce's daughter, played by Bailee Madison, discovers creatures living in the basement. From there a shitty movie unfolds! 

 Wow this movie is bad, it really is. I don't know what went wrong here maybe I've just seen to many haunted house movies but there is really nothing to recommend in this film. The story is boring, the characters are dumb, and the film is not scary or creepy at all... sounds like a horror movie failure. Now a  big problem with the film is that it is incredibly dull and boring. Seriously, I thought Straw Dogs was boring, this makes Straw Dogs look like Die Hard and the film feels painfully long because it is so damn boring! The plot is nothing new and is pretty cliched so there's no surprises along the way.

 The biggest problem though is that it is not creepy or scary. A lot of horror movies may not make me jump, but they still have a creepy or brooding atmosphere. This is just plain dull and a few lame jump scares. Everybody in the film is an idiot, especially Guy Pearce. He is a shit dad who only cares about selling his damn house and doesn't pay really any attention to his daughter. Bailee Madison, the girl, who was good in the movie, could've ended the movie 30 minutes in by telling everybody to leave the lights on because the creatures cant survive in light. But unfortunataly since everybody in this film is a moron you have to sit through this eternal lasting movie. The creatures are also laughable, Judi Dench is scarier looking than these gremlin look-a-likes!

 I could honestly spend days talking about how many things are wrong with Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark but honestly i get mad just typing about this movie. I'll just be quick and say the only good thing is the cinematography and the direction. Everything else is boring, dull, predictable, unscary, shit. No one is likable and I can say its in the top 3 worst of the year. The direction and Bailee Maidsons performance is the reason I'm not gonna give it 1 star. So i will give Don't Be Afraid Of the Dark 1 and a half stars out of 5... they didn't have a picture of that rating unfortunately. All in all, skip Don't Be Afraid Of the Dark unless you want to see a truly bad horror film and one of worst films of the year.

Our Idiot Brother Movie Review

Our Idiot Brother is the new dramedy starring Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, and many more. The plot is Paul Rudd's character Ned, is a very naive and ignorant hippie. He goes to jail for selling marijuana to a police officer, actually a UNIFORMED police officer. When he goes back to his farm in New York, his hippie girlfriend who is a complete bitch, tells him while he was in jail she left him for a another guy (played by T.J. Miller.) After this series of unfortunate and dumb events, he ends up bouncing around to each of his sisters homes. The sisters are played by Emily Mortimor, Zooey Deschanel, and Elizabeth Banks. The sisters are acted very well and all have very distinct personalities and are developed very well. Paul Rudds character ends up ruining their lives because he accidentally reveals secrets about them where pretty much everybody hates him. The reason why Paul Rudd tells everybody everything is explained very well in the movie and makes Ned a likable character, in fact everybody in the movie is developed enough to like them in the end even if they did some nasty stuff. Our Idiot Brother is also one of the few comedies that genuinely are sweet but also can be just flat out funny. There many moments in the beginning of the film that made me laugh very hard and what was great was that it was subtle things about Paul Rudd's hippie persona, it is one the few comedies that has genuinely made me laugh out loud. Overall Our Idiot is a very solid comedy although during the middle of the movie it drags and can be very repetitive, and most of the big laughs for me are in the beginning of the film, but Our Idiot Brother has a solid cast and likable characters and at points hilarious moments. Its not a film you should rush to see at the theater though but it would make for the perfect dvd rental.

 Final rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5

Favorite Summer Movie

Hey guys I want you to tell me what your favorite summer movie was of 2011. Personally I have a tie between X Men First Class and Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Write your favorite summer movie below!

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Eddie Murphy Is... Hong Kong Phooey?

Oh god dammit. Hollywood is once again is making another cartoon adaptation and now its Hong Kong Phooey with Eddie Murphy to star as the voice of the title character. Now I didn't grow up with Hong Kong Phooey so I am not nearly as pissed off as fan of the show will be, I'm just pissed off about how hollywood is adapting everything nowadays. I mean we have a movie based on BATTLESHIP coming out... BATTLESHIP! Anyway Eddie Murphy actually looked like he could redeem his career with the upcoming tower heist even though I don't think it looks great, but then he comes right back with this crappy kids stuff. If you think this a bad idea comment below hopefully they will scrap the idea like they did with the Lone Ranger movie. If you want more info click here http://my.spill.com/profiles/blogs/eddie-murphy-to-voice-hong-kong-phooey-1

Hello!

Hey internet, my name is Lucas Marder and I review movies, talk about movies, and I love movies. I have a Youtube channel where I do all of that here http://www.youtube.com/user/justme7388?feature=mhee. I will be posting movie news, trailers, and write movie reviews here as well. If you like this blog please share it with your other move loving amigos and be sure to check out and hopefuly subscribe to my channel! THANK YOU