War of the Worlds (2005)

War of the Worlds (2005)

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins

Ugh, I never wanted to watch this movie, I really didn’t. But I watched Night of the Day of the Dawn of… well, some ridiculously titled idiot movie which claimed to be as entertaining as this film for a millionth of the budget. I figured I had to give that unfunny guy an even break and see just how well he did. As it turns out, he did a much better job than I expected, and all he did was make fart noises over an old kitchy movie. I was keeping track, and it took until the 67 minute mark (out of 116 minute film) for War of the Worlds to be more entertaining than the long-winded movie name which shall not be repeated. Good job Spielberg, you barely edged out some idiot in his basement.

Everybody here’s familiar with the H.G. Wells story this movie is based on, right? Aliens from Mars come to Earth and just completely kill the shit out of everybody and everything until they all die from a disease. It’s a story about man’s resolve in the face of utter helplessness and futility. Well, this movie is mainly about explosions and Dakota Fanning HOWLING LIKE A BANSHEE EVERY SECOND SHE’S ON SCREEN.

The one good part in this film (which happens about 67 minutes into the film, if I had to take a wild estimate) is Tim Robbins as a scrappy survivor who actually has a really interesting interaction with Tom Cruise and his awful shrieking daughter. It is the one part of the film that really feels like the book and gives you a sense of suspense and urgency. The rest of it plays like any disaster movie that’s come out since 1998. You could put two people in two different rooms, one watching this movie and the other watching The Day the Earth Froze, and if they tried to explain them to each other without using actors names or specific plot points, they couldn’t tell the difference.

Antitrust (2001)

Antitrust (2001)

Directed by: Peter Howitt

Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Tim Robbins, Rachael Leigh Cook

If there’s one thing that Hollywood does 100% right, it’s never understanding anything about computers. It’s like how video games are always 20 years behind in TV and movies, the people who make this shit only know about their own experiences, which just doesn’t include recent technology. SOMEHOW.

A young programmer gets hired by Tim Robbins, who is not at all Bill Gates and his company is nothing like Microsoft. The kid starts getting suspicious when other programmers who didn’t want to join the company end up dead and their innovations appear in the company the very next day. It turns out that the corporation is evil and they do things like that, and also they hired the main character’s girlfriend from prison, for some weird reason.

Remember when Microsoft was under investigation for having a monopoly? Apparently somebody thought that was a good premise for a horror movie, though I’m not really sure how that train of thought happened. Speaking of things that don’t make sense, how about the rest of this movie, huh? If you’re going to go through all the trouble of making it seem like competitors are dying of unrelated things, why would you go and use their work THE VERY NEXT DAY? For that matter, what’s the point of hiring some girl from jail to fuck a programmer? Why are they making a product that not only couldn’t possibly work, but would seem to be super illegal? WHY ARE– fuck it.

Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

Directed by: Adrian Lyne

Starring: Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Peña, Danny Aiello

This was kind of a neat psychological thriller. It even did a good enough job keeping the plot going in between the crazy parts that it all flowed together really well. Hell, I didn’t even really mind all the jumping back and forth in time that this movie does, and usually I hate that shit. I can see how this was one of the inspirations for the Silent Hill series.

Tim Robbins is a guy who had a really bad experience in Vietnam, his platoon was attacked and it was a bloody massacre. He keeps having terrible nightmares, sometimes involving his dead wife and kids, sometimes involving horrible monsters coming out of nowhere, sometimes he’s just in a hospital which seems like hell. When he finds out that the rest of his remaining squad knows about this, he tries to contact the army to see what’s up, but finds that they apparently never even made it to ‘Nam, and he’s out to find what really happened.

The plot is a little… tepid. And very predictable. However, the scenes of the crazy shit happening are basically worth watching the thing by themselves. Apparently this film pioneered that now common horror movie technique of having people’s heads shake around really fast and it’s weird. So… that’s neat, anyway. And again, they actually do the whole flashing back and forth idea well, because from our main character’s point of view, it’s still linear. Anyway, I thought it was all right.

The Pick of Destiny (2006)

The Pick of Destiny (2006)

Directed by: Liam Lynch

Starring: Jack Black, Kyle Gass, JR Reed

I was really excited about this movie when it came out because, obviously, I’m a huge fan of Tenacious D’s first album (it’s obvious because everybody likes it because it’s amazing). Just like everybody else, I was extremely disappointed with this sophomoric effort. Get it? Sophomoric? Because it’s their second album, and also it’s childish? I’m the best at words.

The Pick of Destiny is about two young, fat musicians who form a band named Tenacious D, and who discover that all of rock n’ roll’s greatest guitarists have all used the same guitar pick, which is apparently made from a tooth of Satan himself. They drive across the country to steal it from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and get into wacky mishaps involving sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll.

Not having any expectations is a great way to go into this movie. The songs aren’t as good as their self-titled debut, and the characters aren’t as funny and realistic as they are in their short HBO series, but it’s not really a bad movie. It relies a whole lot on fart and wiener jokes, the lamest of all categories of comedy, but there are still some funny sequences. Also,  Tim Robbins plays a weird hobo guy and is actually pretty great. Also also, the whole movie is basically worth it to see the band in a rock battle against the devil (played by Dave Grohl) at the end, which is obviously a reference to their extremely good song Tribute. So yeah, only extreme fans of the band and/or Jack Black would probably find this movie a worthwhile use of time, but it’s not as bad as I remembered it was, and that’s good enough for me.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Directed by: Frank Darabont

Starring: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton

This is a really good movie. Man, I can’t believe that four of the five movies I’ve reviewed today were really good movies. I’m burned out on ’em, I gotta go watch some direct-to-video thing about vampires eating zombies or something to recuperate.

Shawshank Redemption is about a man who’s sent to prison for life for killing his wife and the man she was cheating on him with. He has a tough time in prison, but he eventually makes some friends, and uses his intelligence to get a job at the prison library, and also to do the taxes of the guards and warden. I’m going to spoil the ending of this here, so if you haven’t seen it and somehow don’t know the ending, just skip to the next paragraph or stop reading. One day, he disappears, and nobody knows what happened to him… until they find out that he had been digging a tunnel out of the jail behind a poster he has hanging up in his cell. On the outside, he takes all the money that he had been skimming from the warden by being sneaky about his taxes, and then sends in a report on all the illegal activities of the warden. When his friend finally gets parole, he finds the spot the guy told him about and goes to Mexico to join him.

I’ll admit, most of my “knowledge” about prison comes directly from this film, and also from The Green Mile, also based off a Steven King story, and also directed by Darabont. Both Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are amazing in this film, and it’s such a compelling story that it’s still enjoyable even after you know the secret twist ending. I must’ve seen this movie four or five times now, and I liked it just as much this time as I did the first. That’s a really unique quality for a film to have, at least in my opinion, and it’s why Shawshank has a very rightful place as one of the better movies of all time.