Terrible Tuesday it is and be it nearly 6am in the morning I just finished watching the newest episode of the critically acclaimed “Dexter” which airs on Showtime and is already in its fourth season. First let me get this out of the way before I even explain what this show means to me personally. The acting in this movie is solid, but the main characters acting is great, let me repeat, Michael C. Hall (Dexter) is the first actor that has ever taken me on a journey that almost makes me care more about his life circumstances than my own, or better yet, when watching this show I become Dexter Morgan.On top of having superb actors, “Dexter” has a storyline to kill for. Dexter Morgan is your everyday serial killer except he kills with a code in mind instilled at an early age from his father. Simply put, the code is a boundary that tells Dexter to make sure that he only kills the guilty, the murderers who have yet to be caught or put away.  If you may have somehow knew already that Dexter is in fact a killing bounty hunter, well this show deals with much more than just that, it deals with Dexter as he often questions his fathers code, childhood, job, friends, family, his own victims, and even his own secret. In fact, much of the commentary you hear happens to be his thoughts as a moment is happening. “Dexter” finds a way to balance dark comedy and seriousness it seems at all times, and hardly ever skips a beat in each episode where at the end you will find yourself yearning to know what is going to happen now, or asking “how does he get out of this one?”

Dexter calls himself “The Dark Passenger” because his need to kill is actually his inner self that he’s not sure sure he can stop. The psychological aspect of this show between right and wrong, good and evil, habits, urges, and even family life actually easily relates to ones own life. If Dexter could stop his need to kill, he would…Dexter wonders why he is so different than everyone else…Deb, Dexter’s sister has deep emotional problems she fights…these issues actually relate to us on an emotional level because we can understand them, well except for the need to kill but you know what I mean.

“Dexter certainly isn’t a show for the weak of heart, or anyone that has trouble dismissing multiple ”F bombs” thrown out by Deb at all times but it is a show that has the ability to make the audience feel personally involved as they follow Dexter Morgans life and begin to feel empathy towards him and agree with his code. Luckily for anyone that hasn’t seen Dexter, there are three (awesome) seasons out on DVD where you can non-stop watch Dexter without having to wait week by week to see what happens next, unless you get to season 4 of course.

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So apparently the movie “Paranormal Activity” got re-released to theaters this weekend. And apparently it’s a pretty big deal. Heh. I would never have guessed it after checking it out on Friday. That’s not to say that it’s a horrible movie by any means, I just found it to be rather bad. Anyway, if you’re considering checking it out then I suggest sticking around. But let’s get on with it, shall we?

Well, there it is. In case you haven’t been paying attention to the latest movie buzz, allow me to give you a bit of a back story on Paranormal. First off, it should be noted that this is one of the highest rated horror movies in recent times, (so right off the bat, you know I’m going against actual critics here). The movie was originally intended to be limited release only, but because of a supposed huge backing from fans via the Internet, the movie ended up going to theaters everywhere this past weekend. The movie itself has been incredibly hyped, almost on the level of The Blair Witch Project. With trailers touting the phrase, “DON’T SEE IT ALONE” and “SO SCARY YOU MIGHT NOT MAKE IT THROUGH IT”, and my personal favorite “HOLY CRAP, I JUST WENT AND SAW THIS MOVIE, AND I ENDED UP PEEING MY PANTS DURING IT. I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE. NO SERIOUSLY, IT REALLY IS THAT SCARY.” Okay, so maybe I made that last one up, but you get the point. Needless to say I went in with pretty high hopes.

What I got instead, was a rather ambitious attempt at trying something new, but ultimately turned into nothing more than an hour and a half, hyped up bore fest. I’m going to try to describe what I mean by saying the movie was “boring”, but the thing is, what’s boring to one person may be exciting to another, so bare with me. Let me start off by examining the more concrete aspects of the movie. Paranormal Activity uses the ever popular “hand-cam” to tell its story. As a result, the cinematography is a bit on the weak side, however, I understand the director’s purpose here. The hand cam is an obvious attempt at trying to make the movie come across as being real (in fact the whole movie is presented this way, there even is a missing credits list at the end of the movie to make it seem more like a documentary), and for the most part it works. This is probably one of the better usages of the hand cam in a movie that I have seen. Paranormal Activity doesn’t suffer from the nauseating “shaky” camera effect that plagued Cloverfield, and overall the hand cam works quite positively for Paranormal.

Now, I know the acting in this movie is supposed to represent “real life”, or people not acting, but I would be a dumb review guy if I didn’t say something about it. Honestly though, the acting in this movie bordered on “acceptable” to “Spanish soap opera channel”.  I can’t really say how I would react to some of the situations that the main characters are forced into, but their reactions at times just seemed a bit unreal. Maybe I’m being a bit too critical here, but it just seemed like a lot of the acting in the movie came down to yelling. Perhaps this is an appropriate response to the situation the characters are facing, it just sort of gets obnoxious at one point. Eh. Maybe the real problem here is the dialogue. Once again, the dialogue can only be described  as a product of trying to make the movie seem as real as possible. A lot of it however, really seems to border on being monotonous and flat out pointless at times. But once again, I understand the motive here; most real life people don’t exactly have the most interesting conversations on an everyday basis, but some of the dialogue in this movie could have easily been edited out, and no one would have been the wiser.

I guess it’s time to discuss my main issue with Paranormal Activity, and that of course would be the scare factor. Going into a movie that pretty much only boasts about being scary left me expecting to be, well, scared. And to tell you the truth, towards the beginning I was quite intrigued by the movie. It started out at a decent enough pace, not too fast, not too slow, and did a really good job of building the tension. However, by about 45 minutes or so in, I was starting to feel bored and anxious. I was actually beginning to notice a trend.

**Minor spoiler warning** The movie itself really only seemed to try to scare you during the night scenes. In fact almost the entire movie can be broken into two segments. The first being the day scenes AKA, the drawn out talking scenes, and the second being the night scenes, or “scary scenes”. Unfortunately, a lot of the movie’s scaring power comes from what I can only really described as “cheap scares”. What I mean by that is the movie gets you to try and focus on a specific thing or character for a moment, and then tries to surprise/ scare you with a loud noise of some sort. The movie tries to make use of this tactic close to a dozen times or so. It finally got to the point where I was just expecting a loud boom or bang, or a door to slightly creak open. These scare tactics really started to just feel repetitive after awhile, and made the movie lose a lot of its edge (at least for me). Paranormal Activity also tries to make use of some psychological scares, but I feel that these were weak at best. Just knowing that the movie was only going to try and scare me at night, made me begin to predict when something was going to happen, and I ended up predicting right about 75% of the time. **End spoilers**

The movie is also quite weak in the plot/ character development department. I won’t divulge any details, but let’s just say both main characters are quite flat. In fact, by the end of the movie I really didn’t care too much for either of them. And because I wasn’t too focused on what happened to the characters, I wasn’t scared/ surprised when something happened to them. As for the plot, let’s just say it’s one of the most simple plots for a movie that I have ever seen. In fact, let me see how few words I can actually describe it in: “A couple try to deal with a demonic spirit that has come over them.” That’s it. That’s literally the premise of the entire movie. And I described it in what? Fourteen words? Seriously? That’s just sort of sad.

In the end, Paranormal Activity’s level of “scariness” will most likely differ from person to person. But the fact still remains that it suffers from some obvious flaws. Pointless dialogue, sub-average acting, scares that get repetitive, and characters I couldn’t give two craps about, really hurt the effectiveness of what Paranormal actually does right.

See it, Rent, or “F-it”: F-it. Honestly, I felt kind of ripped off after I had left the theater. Take my advice and save yourself some money; don’t buy into the hype, or you will more than likely be disappointed.

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Oh god… well, here it is. The review I have been promising for nearly a week. And with it, the return of a Terrible Tuesday review. The movie is of course, Alien vs Hunter, easily one of the absolute worst movies I have ever seen. Hardly anything even comes close to the attrocities this film commits. Any way, here’s the review. Read and enjoy.

Well, there you have it. On first glance it looks vaguely familiar. Hmm. I can’t seem to place my finger where I have seen this picture before though. Oh wait, now I remember!

http://www.dvdtown.com/images/displaymedia.php?id=23182&sizew=500&cat=3&type=1&page=0

Ah, yes. Such a clear rip off indeed. In fact, I can’t help but think that the entire idea of the film was simply to trick people into renting AVH, when they wanted to see AvP. It really seems like they purposefully wanted to model AVH off of Aliens vs Predator. However, this very idea becomes even more laughable when Alien vs Predator was a crappy movie to begin with. So in short, if you thought AvP sucked, you can imagine how much worse AvH is. Yeah. It really is that bad.

Anyway, so the movie starts off with some guy that looks like the politician guy from X-Men and a cop in the desert, and they find an alien spaceship. Basically, an alien comes out and kills the cop. From this point on, the bullcrap has already started. For the next 20 to 25 minutes nothing happens at all. In fact, this is kinda the formula for the rest of the movie. We see an alien for 4-10 seconds, then sit through 30 minutes of pointless dialogue. And let me tell you, the dialogue isn’t only pointless, it’s literally some of the worst writing of all time. It’s so bad that it is hard to physically sit through it.

Eventually we see the hunter guy, or what I guess happens to be the hunter. I really can’t tell at this point and the movie makes sure to not give the viewer any backstory, or information. I guess the best part about the Hunter guy is that he looks like a giant beekeeper. I really don’t understand how a intergalactic bee keeper can fight an alien, but eh. That’s another thing that pisses me off about this movie, the actual characters from the film look NOTHING LIKE THEY DO ON THE STUPID F***ING DVD BOX!!! It’s retarded. Also, they only show the alien for a couple of seconds, and then switch back to something else. It’s almost as if the film director knows the alien looks like a big piece of fecal matter.

At one point in the movie the alien kills some character and then begins to eat him. Later on, they end up reusing the exact same eating footage that was shown previously. Then again. Then again. In fact, they reuse this scene at least four times throughout the entire movie. It’s like they’re not even trying. As far as they’re concerned they already got there money from you, so who cares how bad this movie ended up.

The movie continues to s-l-o-w-l-y build up to its craptacular finale, as the characters (whose names aren’t even worth mentioning) bicker amongst themselves about what to do. Let me tell you right now, the acting in this movie is painful to watch. More than once throughout the film, you can clearly catch actors smile as they are being chased through a forest by the alien. My only guess is that the actors knew how bad this movie was, and couldn’t help but giggle as they watched there entire acting careers get flushed down the toilet. Then again, I don’t think any of these “actors” were really actors to begin with. I have a feeling most of these people just signed onto to do AvH to simply compensate their cocaine and alchohol addictions. At least that’s what I’m hoping.

Eventually at the end of the movie, the Hunter and Alien duke it out, as the stupid humans try to figure out a way to stop the alien. One of the humans ended up getting shot by the Hunter’s laser gun, and immediately vanishes on screen.

Needless to say such an event caused me to pee my pants from laughter. The special effects in this movie are hilariously bad. Finally, one of the human’s manage to kill the alien, and peace is restored.

WARNING POINTLESS SPOILER AHEAD: The final shot of the movie shows the Hunter removing his mask, and it is shown to be a human, who asks what the next mission is. As irrelevent a scene as this is, it leaves the movie up to what can only be described as a possible sequel. Yes, that’s right. A followup to this crap fest may in fact be what the director had in mind.

In the end, what can be said about this movie? Well, quite a lot actually. Words like putrid, God-awful, and excrement come to mind, but AvH still deserves some respect simply because it is so bad that it makes a lot of movies so much better in comparison. Like for example, Starship Troopers has amazing special effects compared to AvH, and The Happening deserves an Academy Award when compared to AvH’s cinematography. And finally 3 Ninjas High Noon at Mega Mountain is the greatest movie of all time when compared to Alien vs Hunter.

With that being said, is Alien vs Hunter the worst movie of all time? Possibly. Should you go see it? Sure, since some one uploaded the whole movie on Youtube, and assuming you a sadist. Is it worth your time? No. You would be better off using your time to do something useful like plotting your grave site, or counting the number of tiles on your bathroom wall.

Crap-O-Meter: -9.5/ 10

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Good God. So, last Saturday me and some friends went and saw The Happening. In case you didn’t know, The Happening is M. Night Shamalamadingdong’s latest film, and has been broadcast as being “his first R rated movie.” Anyway, if you don’t feel like reading anymore of this review, you might as well know now it’s a Tuesday and I happen to be reviewing it. So yes, it’s terrible. If you are wondering if you should see it, don’t. But if you are curious enough to see just how bad it is, continue reading on, if you dare.

About four months ago when no one knew what this movie was about I was pretty excited for its release. The last M. Night movie was definitely a let down, and so I assumed he was going to be trying harder this time around. What a joke that turned out to be. It seems almost like M. Night didn’t want you to know what the movie was about because if you did, their was a good chance you wouldn’t be watching it in theaters.

Anyway, let’s get on with it shall we. First things first. Let’s talk about the acting. If you’re wondering if it is as bad as you have heard, let me tell you: it is. Honestly, it’s some of the worst acting I have ever seen. And that is hard for me to say, because generally I think Marky Mark is a pretty decent B-list actor. But not in this. Not at all. You know the acting is horrible when there is a scene in the movie that involves people a few hundred yards away from you being shot in the head, and you’re only reaction to them blowing out their brains is a quiet: “Oh no.” Seriously.

Other horrendously acted scenes include
the old lady threatening that Marky Mark is going to kill her, and he replies, “What? No…!”, as well as Marky Mark conversing with a plastic plant. Honestly, the acting is terrible, and the dialogue is much worse, if that’s even possible.

I guess possibly the next worse thing about this movie has to be the plot and storyline. In case you aren’t aware yet, the entire movie is more or less about plants emitting toxins that cause people to kill themselves. Yep. The main villain in this movie are trees and bushes. Oh, and let’s not forget the wind. The wind apparently carries the toxin, so there is one especially hilarious scene where the wind picks up and the characters actually begin to try and outrun the scene. It’s absurd, ridiculous, and stupid, all the while it is making you feel like an idiot for even possibly considering this movie was meant to be taken seriously.

Aside from an absolutely retarded plot, the movie itself suffers from what can only be described as on film ADD. It jumps around from scene to scene, going out of its way just to reveal completely pointless scenes that have absolutely no bearing on the film at all. It really seems as if M Night just threw in a bunch of crap to make the movie 90 minutes long. Which is ironic, because about thirty minutes in I was checking my watch every 10 minutes, hoping the film was near it’s end. In fact it got so bad at one point that I was sure the movie was just about over, but to my chagrin, I was only 45 minutes into it. But back to my point about the scenes, not only are they entirely pointless, they completely destroy any mood or tension this film might have established at one point. It pretty much desensitizes the audience and makes the film feel more like a comedy or spoof film, than an actual thriller movie.

In fact, The Happening is so bad that it truly does feel like a comedy at times. It feels like a dumber version of Snakes on a Plane. Now me personally, if the movie was originally trying to go for that “cheap B movie” feel, then I would be perfectly fine with it, and I would enjoy it for what it is. But honestly, I don’t think that’s what M. Night was going for. He specifically tries to make a point in the film, and ultimately underestimates the audience’s IQ level and thereby rams his political messages down our throats until we are forced to understand what it is he is trying to say. As a result, it makes a movie that could have been just humorous film, and turns it into a wanna be serious, political backwash atrocity of a film.

In closing, The Happening is hands down the worse film I have ever seen in a theater. That’s saying a lot. That’s saying it’s worse than TMNT 3, Power Rangers: The Movie, Texas Chainsaw Beginnings, and the Poke’mon movie. So if you still aren’t convinced by now, do yourself a favor. Find it online some where, and watch the first couple of minutes. Chances are by then, you will have had enough, and will be glad you can spend your 8.50 on something else, like toilet paper, or socks.

I give this crap-fest a 8.0 on the Crap-O-Meter. I think this might just be a candidate for worst movie of the year…

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Well, it’s a Tuesday so you know what that means. Yup, time for a Terrible Tuesday review. As usual I will sift through the garbage so you don’t have to. Last weekend some one recommended a movie to me and my girl friend, and since she wasn’t in the mood for high quality film (I had There Will Be Blood picked out), we decided to settle on the recommendation. But let me tell you how disappointed I was about this total crap fest of a movie titled “Stay”.

Okay, so let me say that at first I was at least interested in this film. Ryan Gosling stars in it, and needless to say he is quite the talented actor. Also starring is Ewan McGregor who has his moments from time to time, along with the attractive Naomi watts. Any way, the basic plot of the movie is that Ewan is a psychiatrist who meets a sociopath (Gosling) intent on killing himself on his 21st birthday at 7 o’clock. McGregor, is then intent on trying to save Gosling, and help him with whatever it is he is going through. Watts plays Ewan’s supportive (and some times unsupportive) wife. Along the way, Gosling’s character becomes more and more deep as he begins to show almost super natural powers, as he heals people, and begins to have visions of the future, thus adding to the suspense and overall heightened sense of expectation for the way the movie will end.

The movie tends to suffer from a severe case of what I like to call, “Indie Fever”. What I mean by that is that the movie tries so hard to be different from the average mainstream movie, it implores many different techniques of cinematography throughout the entire film. Now, ordinarily I love it when directors try to do different things when it comes to how the film is show, but this movie is just ridiculous. Take for example the movies Requiem For a Dream, or Momento, both of those movies have incredibly unique ways of showing the viewer what’s happening, without getting carried away. However, with the movie Stay, the director just doesn’t choose one style of filming and stay with it, he instead uses easily over 40 different camera techniques that really just start to give the viewer a headache. Things like filming entire scenes backwards by pointing the camera at a mirror which a character happens to be looking at, to having every scene some how transition into another really just starts to get irritating after awhile.

The acting in Stay is actually pretty good, and is most likely the best thing about the entire film. Honestly, I don’t really have too much to say about it for good or for bad.

I guess now is the time to talk about the worst part of this movie, and the biggest reason why this film is really a pile of poo. As I stated above earlier, the movie takes a number of suspenseful turns, and like most suspense/ thriller movies, presents the viewer with a number of questions that you expect to be answered by the end of the movie. Questions like, “How can Gosling’s character heal people?” and “How can he predict the future?”, and “Why is his name appearing on art work that Naomi Watts did?” and of course, “Why does he want to kill himself?”

So as I sat there, contemplating these questions plus many more, I began to grow more anticipated as the movie came to its close. Then finally, my answer came. As if the movie had spoken to me personally, it answered all of my questions with a single response:

“F**K YOU.”

Yes, that is correct. This is what the movie was inadvertently telling me by revealing that Gosling’s character had in fact imagined the past 90 minutes of the entire movie. The reality of the whole film was that Gosling’s character had been in an accident, and that as he was dying he just imagined every previous scene in the movie. As the credits began to roll I simply sat there in amazement. My girlfriend asked me what I thought and I simply replied, “What a piece of crap. Who ever recommended that is a moron.”

Seriously. The entire ending of the movie omits any reason for the rest of the film to exist. It honestly felt like the writers had some cool plot idea but they couldn’t figure out a way to link it all together, so they just come up with a lame excuse to get end it all. It was a horrible ending, to what could have been an otherwise, decent film.

In order to convey how I felt after the ending, let me describe to you a conversation I had with the film inside of my mind:

Me: So, is this really the end? Don’t I get to find out why Gosling had super powers and visions? Don’t I get to see why McGregor really seemed to be connected to Gosling’s character, almost to the point that they were the same person?

Film: No, but you do get to see Naomi Watts in the shower for a brief second.

Me: But that doesn’t even count, you only show a shot from her neck up! Can you at least tell me what’s the point of telling a story for ninety minutes, and then saying that all of it was made up and thereby making it pointless to the viewer?

Film: Not really. But hey, at least their is some closure. Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts leave together after Gosling dies and go get a cup of coffee!

Me: That’s stupid. Their is no closure in that at all. Nothing is solved! The entire movie leads up to be a complete disappointment! Can I have my five bucks back!

Film: No, but at the very least you can write a stupid review about how bad it was on your blog!

Me: Hey, that’s a good idea!

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So some time last week one of my friends had been telling me about this movie he saw on cable. He told me that it looked like one of the worst movies he had ever seen. So naturally, it had become my duty to make sure I saw this film. The following review is an obvious film candidate for “Terrible Tuesday”, and unlike most reviews where I try to keep my final judgment to the end, their really is no way of getting around it with this movie. It sucks. Honestly. It’s horrible. No. It’s worse than horrible. It’s (and this is a word I rarely use) atrocious. It literally is a bane on the human race. So if that’s enough info for you, then I suggest you stop reading right now and save yourself the pain and misery I had to suffer. If you really don’t want your day ruined, just click on the little x at the top right hand of this window, and continue going on with the rest of your life.

However, if for some reason you are into cruel and unusual punishment, if by chance you really enjoy self mutilation, or if “S&M” is your thing (don’t worry though, thats not what this movie is about), then I guess you may want to continue reading. But don’t you dare say I never warned you.

Continuing on now for those of you that are truly brave, let me first tell you the title ad director of the movie before you decide to go any further. The movie was directed AND written by Jean Claude Van Damme. No, that’s not a typo. No, I haven’t lost my insanity (yet). This movie was literally written, directed, and acted out by Jean Claude Van Damme. He more or less did everything himself. Are you scared yet? Wait it gets better. Let me tell you the title of this film. Are you ready? Ok. Here it is:

THE QUEST

Yeah. Thats right. The name of the movie is The Quest. Seriously. This is quite possibly the most generic movie title ever conceived. Honestly, they could have just named the movie “fighting guy” and it probably would have been better. Or better yet, they could have just called it “MOVIE”. At least that way it would most likely get overlooked. So then, how are you doing? Are you still hanging in there? I’m guessing right about now that escape button on your keyboard is looking real nice. But if you do decide to stick it out, let’s continue. Here, let’s take a look at the movie poster for this film.

Wow. Yeah. I’m more or less speechless right now.

It says Go the Distance. Ok, I’m gonna go the distance. The distance to the rental store to take this piece of crap back.

So then, since you have allowed your eyes to see this horrible image, we might as well continue with the rest of this movie. The film starts out in a bar. An aged man orders a drink and sits down. Soon after a couple of extremely cliche’d “hoodlum” type guys walk in. They are classically dressed in both black leather and chains, and as if that wasn’t enough the leader guy is armed with a switchblade. Oh goody. Anyway, the three guys threaten the bartender, but are then stopped by the old guy, who is revealed to be Van Damme. The bartender asks where he learned to fight like that but Van Damme doesn’t answer. Cue the title screen. Yay.

The movie jumps back to 1925 (WTF), and shows a Van Damme who is a pickpocket and steals money to give to his “kids”. He is chased by the police while running through town on a pair of stilts, and eventually he stows away on a ship with some pirates. The pirates find him, but he is rescue by Roger Moore (the guy who played James Bond) and is then stranded on an island and force to learn Muay Thai. And just for clarification, I didn’t make any of that up. That is literally the actual first 45 minutes of the film.
Around this time what can only be described as a flashback occurs. At least I think it’s a flashback. It’s a completely different scene than from what was happening before. The scene depicts a boy and his mother sitting on a park. The boy picks up a piece of paper, and then the scene is over. It lasts about fifteen seconds.

After this, Van Damme escapes the island and meets Peter Moore again. Van Damme is obviously pissed, but Peter Moore tells him about this fighting tournament where the grand prize is a “Golden dragon, made out of gold.” Yes. That is an actual line from the movie. A Golden dragon made out of… gold. So Van Damme agrees, and they head off for the tournament. What follows is a good ten minutes of people riding on elephants, donkeys, horses, people walking up hill, people walking down hill, people crossing streams, and people walking through forests. Needless to say, one could leave, make a hot pocket, eat it, come back and they still wouldn’t had missed anything.

Eventually they get to the tournament and it is full of cliche’d fighters. Their is a guy from Germany who looks remarkably just like a Nazi even though Nazis didn’t exist yet. Their is a fat guy, who presumably plays the role of the sumo wrestler. Their is a Jamaican guy who break dance fights. Yeah. Then their is a little Chinese guy who fights like a monkey. Cool. Finally, their is a Scottish guy who fights in a kilt, and the main bad guy, some huge dude from Mongolia. As you can see, the cast is quite diverse.

Anyway, to make this as painless as possible, Van Damme fights a bunch of these guys, and ends up winning. He then takes on the Mongolian guy who as literally crushed everyone in his way. He loses pretty bad at first, but then for no real reason comes back and wins. At first I didn’t really realize this was the last fight, because the movie must have decided that it wasn’t a good idea to lead up to it at all. After the fight was over the next scene was another flashback of the little boy and his mother. This time the boy crumples up a piece of paper and the scene ends. The movie then goes straight to the credits.

Ok, so basically at this point I am just sitting their with this look on my face as if to say “WTF.” During the time of the flashback scene I was expecting something to happen. But then it was over. So then I thought, “Oh, I bet they are gonna explain it’s relevance to the story that just happened.” Instead, immediately after that scene the credits begin to roll. I just sat there, confused and puzzled. Until finally it dawned upon me:

The flashback scenes have absolutely no purpose to them whatsoever. They are entirely, pointless.

Aside from that their isn’t a whole lot about the movie to be said. As you may have read the plot is basically horrendous. I guess I should mention that this movie has the distinction of having quite possibly the worst soundtrack I have ever heard. At certain points in the movie I felt like shoving dull butter knives into both my ears. It really is that bad.

I give this film a 7.5 on the crap-o-meter. If you are really looking for a terrible film, this may suit your wants. Finally, if you really don’t believe anything I just said, take a look at this movies trailer. If you don’t at least chuckle at just how bad it is, then congratulations, because you sir are either dead or a robot.

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Well. Here we are. It’s a Tuesday, and apparently it’s time for a blog entry. However, today is a bit different than normal. Since it is a Tuesday, that can only mean one thing: a crappy review. Yes, that’s right. Tuesdays, will now be known rather as “Terrible Tuesdays” in which I choose a movie/ game/ album at random, that for the most part is either overrated, over hyped, or just lain bad, and rip it to shreds for your enjoyment.

So then, now that we have the little introduction out of the way, what is to be the first movie to be reviewed on this less than perfect day? Hmm… Ah…. I know….

Ahh, yes. Troy. The movie that promised so much, yet delivered so little. The movie that had an unquestionable amount of star power, yet after it was released began to make us wonder whether or not having a movie with so many star actors was in fact a good idea. The movie that literally pissed me off after viewing it, and made me want to take it back to the rental store and get my five bucks back. Yes. I really hate this movie that much. So then, let’s get started and begin sifting through this large piece of fecal matter known as Troy.Troy was released on May 14, 2004, and to most people’s surprise, it had a less than accepted reception.I can remember waiting before this movie was actually released. I remember reading an article in TIME magazine (shut up, I was at my grandpa’s, and that’s all the reading material he had, or at least that’s all there was next to the toilet) for Troy, and I began getting kind of psyched to go see it. The TIME article talked about how it had a slew of amazing actors, and a bunch of up and coming thespians as well. Along with this, Troy boasted a HUGE budget (over 180 million). Finally, it had also been mentioned that Troy was modeling it’s battle scenes after Lord of the Rings, and was even talked about that it was supposedly going to out do what LoR had even done.Needless to say I was excited. I had never really heard of a movie (at least in my lifetime) that was this large, coupled with an awesomely assembled cast, and an even bigger budget to boot.The hype for this movie was insane. I can remember tons of people talking about this movie before the official trailers had even come out. Critics and movie viewers alike were all debating on whether or not this would be Brad Pitt’s chance to finally grab an Oscar. And if that wasn’t ridiculous enough, I can remember people already classifying this movie as an “Epic.” Boy were they wrong.

Eventually May rolled around and for the most part, the reviews were pretty shocking. Nearly every movie critic worth a thing all reviewed Troy pretty poorly. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it also flopped pretty bad on it’s opening weekend, scoring less than 50 million (as opposed to it’s ridiculous 180 million production total). For the most part all of the hype seemed to be utter crap, and as for myself I had lost much of the interest I originally had in it. As a result, I simply waited for it to come out on DVD. In hindsight, I am definitely glad I waited.

Finally, Troy was released on DVD at which point I went out and rented it. At first it didn’t really seem that bad. Sure, Troy seems like it doesn’t follow Homer’s stories at all. Sure, Orlando Bloom’s character was obnoxiously horrible. Sure, his acting is quite possibly horrendous, but at least I get to see Brad Pitt kill some guys. That’s cool right? … Right?
Oh God, I had no idea what was still to come.

So then about a fourth way into the movie (after Achilles takes the beach, and Agmamenon’s forces have arrived) I begin noticing something. Every time Brad Pitt says something, it kinda makes me mad. In fact, I kind of begin to notice that with Bloom’s character too. As I sit there and listen to Brad Pitt go on about how he’s not really on anyone’s side, and yet he clearly fights for one of the sides, I begin to realize why I hate it when he talks.

Brad Pitt is literally portraying Achilles as a royal a** hole. Seriously. Just looking at some of his quotes are making me mad right now.

“I want what all men want, I just want it more. You don’t need to fear me girl, you’re the only Trojan who can say that.”
“You won’t have eyes tonight. You won’t have ears or a tongue. you will wander the underworld blind, deaf and dumb and all the dead will know; This is Hector: the fool who thought he killed Achilles.”
“Before my time is done I will look down on your corpse and smile.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I understand a good character is suppose to invoke emotions in it’s readers/ viewers, but these are entirely the WRONG emotions being invoked for some one who is identified as being the main character. Not only do I hate Achilles at this point, I very much want to see him get whats coming to him. So thereby instead of rooting for main character at this point, I am doing the very opposite. I feel this is a prime example of bad writing, or at least bad directing. That being said, I think it’s fine to have Pitt play Achilles in the way that he did, however do NOT make him the main focus in the movie.

Another pretty big gripe I had with this movie was Bloom’s character. Now, I’d like to think he portrayed Paris fairly accurate, but it’s simply the fact that his acting is found to be quite lacking. I found that most of the characters were pretty cliche’d by the end of the movie, but Paris exceeded all of the other character exponentially. Some of his lines are downright laughable, especially the ones when he is talking to Helen, “I’ll hunt deer and rabbit, we can live off the land!”. Simply pathetic.

Other problems I saw with this movie were the camera shots and angles. It should be pretty much understood by now that when you have a movie with MASSIVE landscapes, and MASSIVE armies using long swooping shots to let the viewer get the full picture are a must. Too bad Troy doesn’t really do this at all. Instead, we the viewer never really get the big picture, and as a result everything feels scale down.

An element in this movie that severely pisses me off, is the unnecessary addition of the relationship between Achilles and Briseis. I really hate the fact that Achilles throughout the entire filmed is portrayed as cold merciless killer, but then by chance he meets Briseis, and suddenly she seems to change him over night. This entire addition is almost laughable, and really gives the movie a “cheesy Hollywood” feel. It almost seems like in order to appeal to a wider crowd, the relationship between Briseis and Achilles was added. This accounts for just one of the many, cliche’d and “Hollywood-ized” aspects of this film.

In the end I was happy Troy was over, and as a result felt that I had wasted two hours of my life.

Overall, Troy isn’t a terrible movie, but it certainly fails to deliver. That being said, for something that promised so much, and could have truly blown everyone away, we were instead left with a generic, cheesy, overall shallow movie, that really leaves you feeling empty and kinda mad.

I give Troy a 6 on the Crap-0-Meter (the higher the number, the worse the film is).

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