Keeping the Podcast Lovin' Comin'

Although I tend to work hard on BDK's Movie Show, which I shamelessly plug on this blog weekly (listen to it Friday nights from 7-10pm or stream it at wjfk.com!), this week I was able to relax. I'm in North Carolina on vacation with my family, sipping on some beer and listening to the waves crash down on the shore as I search the sands for girls with a fetish for pasty white bodies (I'm bringing the farmer's tan back in style). However, as part of my duties, I decided I would still check out the new movies and report back to BDK, participating in our weekly podcasts. Yeah, I'm that dedicated.

This week, we review two new movies, My Sister's Keeper and one of the biggest releases of the summer, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. You can check out BDK's written reviews by going to his website and you can read my reviews of these movies by navigating this blog or by simply clicking here and here. So listen, read and enjoy!

BDK and the Beard review June 26th new releases: My Sister's Keeper and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

My Sister's Keeper a Touching Drama

Before getting into my review, allow me to tell a quick story. I'm the type of person who needs absolute silence when watching a movie. I like to completely immerse myself into the experience, forgetting that I'm in a theater watching a film. If so much as one word is uttered, it can completely pull me out of my mindset. In my screening for My Sister's Keeper, two young women behind me were chatting up a storm, getting increasingly annoying as the film went on. I was outraged, literally shaking in my seat. After one polite attempt at quieting them, they persisted on, so I was forced to raise my voice and insist that they cease their incessant banter. They finally did, but any type of emotion the film was trying to convey up to that point was lost in my cloud of anger. But by the end, I was weeping like a little child. My Sister's Keeper didn't only manage to pull me back in, it tugged at my heartstrings and turned my fits of rage into tears of sadness.

Abigail Breslin plays Anna, a girl who has been genetically conceived by her parents to assist her dying sister, Kate (Sofia Vassilieva). As long as she's lived, she has helped Kate by giving her anything out of her body that she needed to stay alive, including painful operations like bone marrow transplants. Now Kate needs a kidney and Anna is the only one that matches her type. Unfortunately, Anna has other plans. She feels that her parents have unjustly used her body throughout her life, so she decides to sue them for its rights. She insists that cutting her open again and again may heal Kate, but damage her in the process. So as Kate withers away, she fights it out with her mother, Sara (Cameron Diaz), in court.

Here's the problem with these types of movies. It's a cheap tactic to have a child with a deathly sickness because it's such an easy target to draw emotion from. It's only natural for us to feel sympathy for a young one who is undeservedly moments away from death and even the most poorly made movies can make us feel that way. The difference here is that it doesn't feel cheap. There's an authentic feel to it that allows you to connect to the characters, which is really the driving force behind the film. I wasn't crying simply because it was a child dying of cancer. I was crying because her peaceful acceptance of death was overwhelmingly powerful. In her words, she doesn't mind that her sickness is killing her, but it's killing her family and she'd rather die than cause burden and pain to the ones she loves.

Without a doubt, there's a touching sadness to the film that really allows us to put life into perspective, while also allowing us to discuss death and accept it as an inevitability. It shows us that it doesn't really matter how we go out, but rather how we spend our time beforehand. In fact, Kate can work as a reminder to us all about that, which is one of the many reasons her character works so well. Another big reason is the actress behind the role, one Sofia Vassilieva, who gives a performance as mesmerizing as I've seen in quite a while. In her first major movie role, Vassilieva delivers an Oscar worthy performance, saddening, yet poignant in her sweeping portrayal of an inches from death young girl who has lived a life dependent on others, thankful for their love, but ready to let go and have them move on with their lives. She's the anchor in this movie.

The film is spliced together through an interweaving timeline, frequently jumping back and forth from the present predicament and important past moments that defined Kate as the person she is today. Through these, you learn of the physical, as well as the emotional pain she has had to go through in her life, which makes it all the sadder to see her clinging onto life in a hospital bed. The interesting thing, however, is that the film is narrated by nearly every character in the movie except Kate. It shows us her experiences firsthand, but we also get different perspectives from the other characters, exploring what they saw, how they felt and why it had an impact on their lives at that moment in time. Even in the midst of controversy and anger, they never lost their love for one another and these narrations worked as a conveyance for that.

Although I hesitate to get so profound as to say the film creates a message about genetic engineering, I do feel the film explores its topics enough to warrant a discussion, and that's a good thing. It doesn't so much answer questions as it does raise them. It asks whether or not genetic engineering someone for a specific purpose is morally right because after all, it's still a person. You can't force them into anything they don't want to do, even if that means it could potentially hurt someone you love. But it also explores the decision of whether or not you should essentially "pull the plug" on a dying loved one. It applauds a mother's desire to keep her child alive no matter what the cost, but asks, when have you gone too far? Eventually, you just have to let them go, no matter how painful it may be. The film certainly won't provide any giant revelation, but it gets you thinking and that's an excellent quality for this type of emotional drama.

I feel like I need to see this movie again, or at least the first half, due to my disgust with the rude couple sitting behind me. I fear I may have missed some vital moments to the story in regards to Kate's journey to her inevitable outcome, one that we all must face sooner or later. But regardless of some people's lack of respect for others, My Sister's Keeper still managed to get my waterworks flowing. When it comes to movies, I'm an openly emotional guy to begin with, but none have touched me this deeply in some time. This isn't a perfect movie, with a few hit and miss scenes sporting questionable dialogue and bad delivery, but the overall product exceeds expectations and manages to make Cameron Diaz relevant again. My Sister's Keeper doesn't disappoint.

My Sister's Keeper receives 4/5

If Only It Had Transformed Itself Into A Better Movie

I've gone on record a number of times saying that I believe the original Transformers movie is one of the most overrated films of the last decade. While the critics have properly defined its quality, with it hovering at a mediocre 57% on Rotten Tomatoes (and even that might be a tad high), fans have praised it as a masterpiece of action filmmaking, the quintessential summer blockbuster full of special effects, action and beautiful women. Unfortunately, it takes more than that to make a good movie. While not particularly bad, Transformers was nothing more than a vacuous, overly long and excessively loud piece of cinematic fluff, a film of no consequence that's destined to be forgotten in the wake of other action flicks more deserving of merit. But its sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, isn't just a huge step backwards. It's a huge step backwards into a large chasm. With a convoluted story, poor acting, idiotic dialogue and racist overtones, Revenge of the Fallen fails to live up to even the most modest of standards.

I could attempt to concoct some type of plot synopsis at this point, as per usual with many of my reviews, but to do so would be in vain, because I didn't have a damn clue what was going on most of the time. Within the overarching story, which follows some nonsense about a pyramid capable of destroying the sun and earth, there are at least five or six side stories. One follows the Decepticons as they attempt to resurrect Megatron, who has since been dumped in the ocean following his defeat in the first movie. Another explores the newly formed alliance between the Autobots and the military. Another tries to expand Sam's (Shia LaBeouf) and Mikaela's (Megan Fox) relationship. And another follows Sam as he has hallucinations and starts to see mysterious ancient symbols in his head. There are more, believe it or not, but to keep typing would prove no good because there's no way to tie them all together. There was simply too much going on. The film lacked a narrative focus and at two and a half hours, it was an incoherent mess.

Despite its confusing story, the movie still dumbs down plot points. At one point, the camera shows a satellite and says through text, "U.S. Military Satellite." Oh really? Is that what that is? The fact that it was in space, had an American flag on it and had military chatter bouncing off it just wasn't enough, huh? I'm not sure I could have wrapped my feeble little mind around that one. The movie explained things that needed no explaining and ignored things that were too convoluted to understand.

But hey, who cares? Even fans of the first film admit that to appreciate it, you have to look past its asinine story and enjoy the action. So the plot is inconsequential, right? Wrong. To care about the action, I have to care about the story and this clearly didn't have one. While the original wasn't quite as jumbled, it nonetheless played into this same weakness, but the action was spectacular and it kept me mildly entertained, despite the ever increasing brain cells getting slaughtered at its expense. But this time, the action is considerably less exciting because there's a "been there, done that" feeling to it. Just like its predecessor, the action scenes, specifically the final battle, goes on for far too long, at an estimated 45 minutes. The action can be impressive (and it's the only thing in this movie that is), but when there's this much of an abundance, it loses its impact. The action needs to have context to create meaning, but with no downtime, none is formed.

Like many Michael Bay films, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has good production values and looks great in regards to its action scenes and special effects, but the whole of the film is incredibly shallow, offering nothing more than brainless action accompanied by tedious plotlines and poor acting. It quickly becomes an endurance test. How long can you last without wanting to leave the theater in disgust?

Not all of that disgust comes from the obnoxiously loud action, however. You also have the juvenile humor, including one scene that depicts a miniature Decepticon humping Mikaela's leg, immediately followed by another essentially farting out a parachute, all culminating in a late scene showing a Decepticon with two giant wrecking ball testicles. It was moments like these that solidified its place not just at the bottom of the barrel, but burning through that barrel, so deep that you wouldn't hear a rock hit bottom if thrown to test its distance.

Still, its worst transgression comes in the form of Skids and Mudflap, two Autobots helping Sam throughout his journey. As with many of the robots, these two have personality traits that connect them to certain human qualities and can be defined in certain roles. These two took up the "black" role and it's as shockingly racist as you might expect it to be. Even their design plays into the stereotypes many have of African Americans, including gold teeth and large ears protruding from their heads. Once you make them the stupid, illiterate ones and give them lines such as, "Read? We don't really do much reading" and "That's old school, yo," you've crossed the line. I use the word "offensive" in many reviews, but I use it in different contexts. It doesn't always necessarily mean I was personally upset at what had happened, but it certainly does in this case. Skids and Mudflap embody many offensive stereotypes and it was disheartening to see this come through in what should be considered a fun popcorn flick.

Even still, sometimes even the most wretched of material can be made tolerable by good performances, but nobody seemed to care in this disaster of a film. Shia LaBeouf was decent enough, but he's proven himself as a great actor in films like Disturbia and Eagle Eye (say what you want about that movie; he still gave an excellent performance), so it's disappointing to see him essentially phoning it in here. As for Megan Fox, she can barely act with other people. Watching her attempt to interact with something that wasn't really there was pathetic. She was just terrible. Just as well, the two have little chemistry together. In the first flick, Sam was the dorky loser pining over the beautiful girl way out of his league and it worked. In this, he's a buff, super stud and the dramatic change in character didn't authenticate well in the transition from movie to movie.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has so many negatives, it would be nearly impossible to condense them into a readable manner and my longevity in this review is already reaching too long of a length. But when you're dealing with a movie as bad as this, it's essential to point out all of the major problems and if those are all major problems, just think of how many minor ones there are. It boasts an awful script, which includes some eye rolling lines from the robots, who spouted out action clichés as if they were playing a monotonous video game where the protagonist only has three or four recorded lines of dialogue, the forced exposition to get the film moving along was blatantly obvious, the comedy relief mother character was entirely unfunny and the film is poorly structured, with random interjections of unrelated side material during scenes. It's many faults border on outrageous.

I wasn't a huge fan of the first film, but that easily could have been rectified with a little editing, shortening some of the overly long action scenes and cutting out unnecessary filler, but the sequel is beyond redemption. Once one of the characters reaches what is essentially robot heaven, you realize that nothing was going to save this travesty. This is a horrifically bad movie and it won't live up to any expectations set for it, especially considering the insanely high bar the first film's avid fans have inexplicably set for it. You could spend 10 dollars and go waste two and a half hours of your life on this mindless drivel or you could take that money and put it to something useful, like those dinosaurs that grow when you put them in water. It's cheaper, it takes about the same amount of time and it's much more intellectually stimulating.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen receives 0.5/5

Year One Incredibly Unfunny

Jack Black, Michael Cera, Hank Azaria, Paul Rudd, Harold Ramis, David Cross and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. With such an impressive list of hilarious people, comedy fans around the world have a terrific reason to be excited for Year One. Their funny radar should be going wild right about now and they should be flying high in anticipation. Well, I'm about to shoot them down. Year One is awful; a damn near travesty that wastes the comedic talents of everyone involved and it should be avoided at all costs.

Year One doesn't boast much of a story, unless you count "fat idiot and skinny loser say stupid things" as a story. Unfortunately, I don't. I call that a comedy sketch, and that's precisely what this film felt like. It felt like a five minute "Saturday Night Live" short stretched to the breaking point. What could have been funny in one small dose is grating on the nerves at a painfully long runtime of an hour and 4o minutes.

What the movie does is take Jack Black and Michael Cera to seemingly unrelated locales and have them interact with different characters inconsequential to the narrative, which leaves little room for a coherent story arc. In fact, this could be one of the most stupidly confusing movies I've seen all year. On their journey, they meet up with Cain and Abel and travel to Sodom and Gomorrah, creating many biblical references, but it never makes a point. These biblical implications have no payoff and work only as a means to get the characters from one place to the next. But what is its setting? Is it taking place during biblical times? If not, then when? It's called Year One, but its historical timeline is nebulous.

Maybe I'm looking a bit too much into it. After all, this film is merely a vehicle for Black and Cera to show off their comedic talents, both of whom are usually funny. The problem is in their foolish refusal (or lack of ability) to change their styles. Each actor plays basically the same role in each of their respective movies, and that doesn't change here. However, their two styles conflict with each other, never creating a comedic fusion between the two. Black is more over the top with his crazy antics while Cera is more downplayed and sarcastic. The duo had zero comedic chemistry because their differing styles allowed no room for them to play off of each other. Watching Cera desperately try to cling onto something funny from his comedic opposite was embarrassing.

Still, I hesitate to place all of the blame on bad casting because the jokes simply aren't funny. Black and Cera may not be the perfect couple to put opposite each other, but they still do a competent job trying to make something out of nothing, but then again, that is its main problem. There's nothing here. The jokes are terrible, consisting of gross out humor that only the most juvenile of teenagers and children will think are funny, including scenes where Black eats manure and Cera urinates on his own face.

Likewise, too many of the jokes went nowhere, with scenes abruptly ending before any type of punchline was delivered, including a wasted scene with Paul Rudd where his character is relegated to fisticuffs with his brother who eventually kills him. Hilarious.

Year One sports two, maybe three, somewhat amusing jokes that are spread throughout, but even that's only an average of one every 33 minutes. This isn't as bad as, say, Land of the Lost, but considering the impressive amount of talent involved, this is much more disappointing, which you could argue is far worse. I hate to say it, but Year One is a huge waste of time.

Year One receives 1/5

The Proposal Not Quite Worth It

A recent trend has emerged in romantic comedies. Rather than tell a simple love story, most films in the genre try to take it one step further and create situations that are highly implausible. Last year's What Happens in Vegas followed two people who got hitched in a drunken stupor, won millions of dollars and were then sentenced by a judge to "six months hard marriage." Earlier this year, Bride Wars took two best friends whose wedding dates were mixed up and accidentally scheduled on the same day in the same place, forcing one to choose a new wedding site, creating a rivalry between the two. The latest movie to follow this trend is The Proposal, but unlike those aforementioned debacles, this one takes its unconvincing premise and twists it into a tolerable time waster, despite its many problems.

The absurdity in question this time sees Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock) about to be deported back to Canada because her Visa has been voided. This means that she wouldn't be able to work for an American company, which would strip her of her job as editor that she worked so hard for. Her only option is to blackmail her assistant Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) into marrying her to make her citizenship official and eliminate the threat of deportation. Unfortunately, the INS is onto their game and they are forced to act like a real couple to avoid suspicion. To do this, they take a trip to see Andrew's family in Alaska and try to keep the ruse going long enough for their plan to work.

The Proposal takes the tired subject matter of two people reluctantly falling in love despite their previous hatred for one another, ties it into a ridiculous story and actually manages not to fall flat on its face. Here's why. Contrary to a movie like What Happens in Vegas, the characters in this film aren't detestable. That movie portrayed two terrible people playing mean spirited pranks and jokes on each other and it wasn't fun to watch. With such reprehensible characters, it was hard to root for them or care about what happens, but the characters in The Proposal aren't repulsive human beings, but rather flawed individuals with problems that explain why they sometimes act the way they do. Margaret has had a surprisingly tough life. Her parents died when she was young and she's been on her own as long as she can remember. She never had a family to love and care for her, which explains a lot of her venomous ways and is a testament to how well thought out the characters were. Yes, Margaret and Andrew fight a lot, but it never feels like it's being mean spirited just for the sake of it. The malice from each character comes from the frustration they have about their personal lives.

Be that as it may, the story is still a mess, ranging from the ludicrous setup to the unnecessary side story involving Andrew's daddy issues. Throughout the movie, Andrew's father, played by Craig T. Nelson, pressures him into taking up the family business in Alaska, causing a constant argument over Andrew's desire to instead work as an editor in New York. What could have worked as another layer to these otherwise well written characters works more as uninteresting filler that takes up more than its fair share of screen time, but goes nowhere, with the conflict quickly resolving because the film was running out of leeway.

Given the nature of the situation, much of the humor revolved around awkward exchanges, which isn't always funny and fell flat too many times, mostly from the likes of Sandra Bullock, whose character is too bitchy and annoying to be funny. Every joke that hits is from the comedically talented and underrated Ryan Reynolds, who is excellent in this type of role and really won me over with his alluring charisma and spot on comedic timing. Whereas Bullock seemed to be trying too hard, with over the top antics that didn't sit well with the tone of the film, Reynolds' more down to earth approach and subtle delivery complimented the screenplay and made up for Bullock's lackluster witticism.

Although the two leads have good chemistry together, which makes the more dramatic moments work well, the film hits too many roadblocks along the way, with long stretches of humorless drivel and loony plot points (wait until you see Betty White dancing around a campfire and chanting incoherent nonsense), and it simply doesn't have enough to sustain it all the way through. The Proposal was a pretty enjoyable film and it's a close call, but it just has too many problems to warrant a recommendation.

The Proposal receives 2.5/5

Super Fun Podcast Time

I'm well aware that not every podcast I do with BDK is particularly exciting. Some weeks are just boring, with minimal releases where we tend to agree, which makes our discussions too calm for the attention span of your average Internet surfer. Well, this week's a doozy. We don't necessarily argue over the new movies (we both basically agreed on them actually), but it's the extra discussion that's real interesting. That or I'm just pretentious and love the sound of my own voice. Whatever.

On top of the week's new releases, The Proposal and Year One (look for those reviews soon), we talk about the June 30th DVD release of one of the most unintentionally funny movies I've ever seen (and one of my inevitable worst of the year picks), Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, as well as my doling out two zero scores in two weeks (to the horrendous films Land of the Lost and Imagine That--read my reviews here and here), and topping off with a quick debate on which will be better: My Sister's Keeper or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Look for our actual reviews for those two flicks next week where I'll be calling in from North Carolina.

For now though, check out our podcast and don't forget to listen to BDK's Movie Show live every Friday night from 7-10pm or stream it on wjfk.com. You can also check out BDK's written reviews by clicking here.

BDK and the Beard review June 19th new releases: The Proposal and Year One.

BDK and the Beard Are At It Again

Before I landed a job working on BDK's Movie Show on 106.7 WJFK (listen to it Friday nights from 7-10pm or stream it at wjfk.com!), I was a lonely soul wandering the curving roads of the back country. One day, upon approaching a bridge, an evil troll jumped out and demanded that I give him a magical potion that would transform all of the cuddly teddy bears in the world into ravenous beasts, so as to make the world a more hostile place. What reasoning he had for this I do not know. All of a sudden, a man with sweeping blonde hair that glistened in the sun rode down a mountain on horseback, coming to aid me in my plight. He gave the troll the five finger death punch, hurling him away from the bridge and over the mountain, allowing me to pass. Then he asked me in return that I make super awesome podcasts about movies so he could listen. I figured it was the least I could do. True story.

And so I'm here, giving you (and the mysterious man with flowing locks of golden hair) another movie podcast where BDK and I review the week's newest releases. This week, we talk about the latest remake, The Taking of Pelham 123, the new Nickelodeon kids flick, Imagine That, and a small, independent film named Away We Go. You can read all of my reviews of these movies by navigating this blog or by clicking here, here and here. You can also read BDK's written reviews over at his website. For now though, listen and try not to cream yourself over our innate awesomeness.

BDK and the Beard review June 12th new releases: The Taking of Pelham 123, Imagine That and Away We Go.