THE NEXT THREE DAYS (2010)

[Update 03/09/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Simple everyday man Russell Crowe has his world rocked when his wife (Elizabeth Banks) is suddenly arrested and thrown in jail for murder. He cries and whimpers some, but when the last legal effort has been denied Russell puts on his biggest, baddest big girl panties and decides he's going to break her out of jail himself!

That's an interesting idea for a movie and for the most part it works, I was entertained, but I wish it had just been darker! There was a short moment (when he was getting money for his plan) that was dark and it was easily the best part of the movie. Another thing that bothered me is there were multiple rock montages. What is this a ROCKY movie? Also, the escape was way too easy. There wasn't any traffic on the roads. I'll run into more difficulty returning this DVD to the fucking video store than he did escaping the city with the police hot on his tail.

Those things aside, I enjoyed the movie. It wasn't anything special and a month from now I will have forgotten most of it, but it was a good lazy afternoon time-waster.

TRY AND GET ME! (1950)

Jobless Frank (THE HITCH-HIKER, IN A LONELY PLACE) Lovejoy has a wife and kid depending on him. His employment prospects are looking like shit and he's down to his last few bucks when he runs into Lloyd Bridges, a slick-talking small time hoodlum who's looking for a driver. Frank doesn't want to do it, but he doesn't really have a choice. They successfully pull off a couple of convenience store hold ups, but when a botched kidnapping turns deadly Frank is quickly eaten alive by the guilt. To make matters even worse a local newspaper man has whipped the local citizens up into a frenzy of bloodthirsty vigilantism.

It's a shame this movie is so hard to find, because even though the newspaper moments drag and are bogged down in simplistic social commentary, the rest of the film moves along smoothly and the ending was quite a shocker! Frank Lovejoy does a great job of portraying somebody riddled with guilt and Lloyd Bridges is scary as the balls to the wall criminal who will stop at nothing to get money.

Not the greatest noir that ever did noir, but it's a good watch.

APT. (2006)

Alright. So you got this big apartment building and awhile back this chick who's in a wheelchair (her legs don't work) and because of that, even though she's in her 20's, she literally does nothing but stare out the window. No job, no hobbies, nothing productive, just staring out that goddamn window.  Anyway, her parents die in a car wreck and her neighbors take her in. Sounds nice, except for the fact that they're assholes who beat the shit out of her and even rape her. Instead of simply leaving or calling the cops, she commits suicide instead and now her ghost (the standard head down with long, straight black hair and having a non-stop seizure variety) goes around every night at 9:56 killing people. Yawn.

A woman who lives in the complex thinks that it's odd that people die every night around 10 o'clock (come to think of it...that is kinda of odd), but instead of moving out, she investigates the murders on her own. Great idea! Eventually she tells the police, but they're useless.

If you're a time traveler from the past and you've never seen a horror movie before, APT. might come off as original and scary, but to everybody else it'll blow so hard all of your Nintendo cartridges will start working. [Edit 01/10/2021: that joke is so tired and horrible that I'm going to leave it.  Fuck, that was bad.]

Zero scares, unoriginal story, slow pace, weak kills (falling, more falling, yet even more falling, falling in front of train, eating to death, gunshot suicide, needle to neck).  I cannot think of one single reason to watch this movie. Skip it and never look back.

The scariest part about this movie is this fucking parking lot. How are the people in the middle suppose to get out?!

SEX IS ZERO 2 (2007)

Well, I still haven't figured out what the title SEX IS ZERO means, but I did like this movie better than the original. Most of the characters are back (there's even a new and improved main girl), a lot of the jokes are rehashed, very little nudity and the story is that same bizarre half funny/half depressing mixture, but for whatever reason I enjoyed this outing. Maybe the characters are starting to grow on me.

The dweeb from the first movie is still in school and even though he's a complete dork he has yet another hot girlfriend! She's beautiful, has a great personality and is completely dedicated to him, but her mother hates him and wants to set her daughter up with a handsome, successful lawyer instead. The other stories revolve around the guys training for a MMA tournament and the girls training for the swimming championship...there's also a new sexy swim coach that catches the eye of the guy with the psychotic girlfriend. That story was actually funny. On the depressing side of things, you have an attempted suicide, a really sad breakup scene and the even sadder accidental meeting afterwards.

Overall, a fun movie and I think the best improvement over the original was the new girl. The older girl was beautiful, but I really liked this girl's character and that added a new dynamic to the film: me actually caring what happened to the characters. One thing I did find disturbing was the repeated occurrence of guys sticking stuff up other guy's buttholes. What the fuck?

Part 1 - Sex Is Zero (2002)

THE PERFECT STORM (2000)

A group of fishermen (each with a heart of gold so pure that the mere sweat off their manly brows could cure a blind, one-armed orphan with terminal butt cancer) go fishing out in the ocean. They catch some fish and when they turn around to go back...there's the biggest hurricane in the history of the Universe standing between them and the mainland. They were warned multiple times that this storm is fucking huge, but goddamn it, the ice machine has conked out and they gotta get these future fish sticks to market!  Stat!  Fifty foot waves be damned!!! You can probably guess what happens next...that's right, Marky Mark uses the Shining to communicate to his wife onshore. 

When it comes to pure Hollywoodized excessively sentimental unicornshit, it doesn't get much sappier than THE PERFECT STORM. From the very beginning of the movie, the musical score was swelling and each character introduced was even more faultless and contrived than the last one. By the 15-minute mark I actually started profusely lactating what appeared (and tasted) to be strawberry milk! True story. Speaking of true stories, this movie was based on a true story. I've done zero minutes of research, but I'm pretty goddamn sure that most of the bullshit in this movie was bullshit. Like when the fishing boat did a barrel roll and survived or the scene were the boat was damn near vertical and George Clooney was still standing. I doubt that happened in real life.

That said, this movie was a lot of fun to laugh at. Everybody had horrible New England accents, Marky Mark and George Clooney had dueling whiskers (I even hoped, I mean, thought they were going to kiss at one point), people risked their lives left and right to save others, nonstop swelling music, tons of crying, cliches on top of cliches, painful dialogue and the best part? The failed attempt to make the audience give a fuck about the crew of the boat. I loved how each one was portrayed to be so pure of heart and saintly that they made Norman Borlaug look like fucking Hitler, but yet they were still selfish enough to go fishing after being warned repeatedly not to do so and then, even after looking at the weather bulletin, they vote to drive through the storm! That aspect right there removes any emotional connection that I might have actually had to the characters...no matter how immaculate they each were.  I guess God just wanted his angels back in Heaven.

Check it out with some friends and laugh.

True story (from my imagination): In the original cut of the movie, in the scene were George Clooney ghost rides the boat whip up the tidal wave halfpipe, somebody screams "Fuuuccck!  It's the perfect storm, bitchez!!!"

If Jesus had been on the Titanic it would have looked like this.