Nerd Up!

The “Under the Hood” storyline was slightly controversial when it was first published – but that controversy hasn’t stopped DCU from making one of their best animated features to date, one full of great voicework and some spectacular Batman-style action.
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10. Meet The Spartans
This could be easily number one, but since I only made it through the first 15 minutes I’ve pushed it back to 10. Sorry, Kevin Sorbo.

9. Hancock
Bait and switch! I was under the impression that this was a comedy about a homeless superhero. Instead, I was bamboozled into watching Peter Berg’s latest Scientology recruitment video. This would have been excellent had it remained a comedy, but the convoluted plot twist in the second act turned this promising movie into Battle Field Earth.

8. Street Kings
I had high hopes for this movie. A crew of dirty cops. One of them is implicated in the murder of a fellow officer? Sounds like something involving Vick Mackey (Season 2-4), but Keanu as an alcholic vice cop is laughable. This movie also gets negative points for the audacity of calling it “The Watchmen”.

7. X-Files: I Want to Believe

Basically a 2 hour episode. Would have been better if it came out in the 90′s.

6. Be Kind Rewind
This movie spawned the most pretentious internet phenomenon of all time, “swede movies”.  Although short lived, it did produce a lot of shit youtube videos… thus adding to the shit phenomenon that was this movie (picture a giant shit supernova, but at a running time of 1:41 mins).

Plus, Jack Black in Blackface. Not cool.

5. Transporter 3
The Transporter formula is pretty simple. Statham + Cars = Action Movie. How can you mess this up?

Oh yeah, Natalya Rudakova.

“One of these Things Just doesn’t Belong…”

4. Righteous Kill

Imagine Scent of a Woman and Analyze This, throw them in a lame serial killer story, toss in a skateboarding pimp, a has been boy band member and 50-Cent…sigh.  Remember on The Simpsons when Homer tried to build the ultimate car? That’s probably what the initial meetings for the conception of this movie; “Yeah, lets make the white male pimp more EXTREME” – High Fives!

3. Punisher Warzone

I understand that the original intention was to be a homage to the Tim Bradstreet/Garth Ennis version of the Punisher (with its own brand of gonzo violence) but the use of brutality in this movie is set to a cartoonish level. What originally might have looked cool in print fails epically on screen. I think director Lexi Alexander originally intended this to be a comedy, thus making Ray Stevenson’s already wooden performance the greatest example of deadpan comedy ever documented (look out Steven Wright).

2. The Happening

If the “disease” is an airborne virus are you telling me Mark Whalberg survived that long with those nostrils?

1. The Day The Earth Stood Still

As if you didn’t know!

First off, I hate remakes, I think it’s lazy film making and is basically Hollywood studios cashing in on its own intellectual property. Sure it’s passed off as a homage to the classics of yesteryear, sure it’s been updated to be more accessible for today’s audiences, but enough is enough, certain movies should not be remade, if a movie is already considered “Classic”, what needs to be changed? In a nutshell, the movie was what you expected, it sucks. Good eye candy, little story, and some ok performances from the movies leads. I honestly think keanu was perfectly cast as a (bumba) Klatu, I know I just broke a nerd rule, but hear me out.

I’ve read the complaints from various sources that the plot seems to get lost in the special effects, I’m guessing movie audiences need to be spoon fed plot these days, but that is beside the point. This movie fails for one reason, the casting of Jaden Smith (aka Will Smith’s kid), as the rambunctious annoying foil to the grown up characters. I’ll just put it out there, I hate this kid. His performance should go down in cinema infamy with Darth Vader yelling “no” and those goddamn annoying robots from the Black Hole.

He does serve a purpose and is an integral role to the advancement of the plot. The argument could be made that Jaden’s character is the movies true villain. It’s not humanity destroying the environment, or Klatu’s robot homie (GORT), or even the “evil” US Defense Secretary. No, all these forces are basically doing what nature intended, Jaden’s character is the true personification of evil. From initially wanting to destroy the alien, to then selfishly wanting the alien to resurrect his relatives,  those come from fear. The truest act of villainy is dropping dime on Keanu after he saved your punk ass. “A hug from you could be a federal squeeze”. nobody likes a snitch.

“No he’s going home” …. that’s right, -$15