Eimer's Best Netflix Reviews - Pieces of April

I thought this was appropriate for the upcoming Thanksgiving Holiday.

Truthfully, I probably would not have rented this flick unless Katie Holmes married Tom Cruise.

Not 100% accurate. More so, because I looked up her filmography on IMDB and noticed that this was the only movie I hadn't seen starring Mrs. Cruise.

Plus, everyone on the site was talking about how good it was, so I thought I’d give it a try.

Turns out I really enjoyed it and – at 88 minutes long – it was the perfect length. With tattoos, black nail polish and (Gasp!) a black boyfriend – Katie’s character is the black sheep of a rather crazy, dysfunctional family as she prepares for Thanksgiving dinner at her rather small apartment in the city. Mom has cancer and hates her daughter for being so (insert any word here). Dad is trying to paste the family together. Two siblings have their own problems as well. Plus with Grandmother in tow, you’ve got a great concoction for disaster.

The movie splits up into three parts: family’s trip to New York, Katie’s trials and tribulations of trying to prepare Thanksgiving dinner and her boyfriend’s trip through the city (A drug deal perhaps?). In any event, everything comes together and – in a sense – the end of the movie is a beginning of sorts that brings a tear to your eye.

Great little movie that could. And a perfect representation to America's most dysfunctional holiday.

GRADE: B+

Interesting stuff my kids draw - The Thing

I know. I know. Everyone loves their kids and thinks that everything they do is the cat's meow.

However, trutch be told, there are, in fact, a lot of things my kids do that downright pisses me off.

But, once in a while (okay more than once in a while), they say something or do something that puts a great big smile on my face and makes me proudly say, "Yep, them's my kids."

Case in point was something that happened a couple days ago. I showed both of my kids (my 3-old son and 4-old daughter) the 50 monsters cartoon, which I posted last week prior to Halloween.

They were mesmerized. My daughter more so than my son. She was particularly taken by this image:

"What's that?" she asked.

"Oh, that's from the movie The Thing," I said.

"What is it?"

"It's a creature that takes the form of other creatures and, sort of, morphs into them via some crazy biology."

I don't think she really understood my answer. However, that was about the extent of the conversation.

I looked at her face and she was still transfixed. I was proud that she liked my stuff.

Yesterday, when I picked my daughter from school, she approached me with a proud smile on her face and handed me the following picture:



"What's this," I asked already knowing the answer.

"The Thing," she said with a beeming beautiful smile.

Not sure about you, but it does look like the creature Kurt Rusell confronted in the final scene.

Eimer's Best Netflix Reviews - The Happening

Look, I enjoyed THE RUINS. I thought it was interesting to have nature finally fighting back against mankind. I could even suspend my disbelief in to believe that Jordy Verrill was, in fact, slowly turning into a plant in the CREEEPSHOW vignette.

However with this film, I tried and tried and tried to suspend my disbelief and roll with this movie.

I just couldn’t.

The acting, the direction and the stupid, stupid script didn’t enthrall me one bit during its 90-minute run. And that bums me out because I was hoping M. Night would finally get his shit together and hit one out of the park like he did with UNBREAKABLE and THE SIXTH SENSE.

I’m now convinced that’s not going to happen unless he starts more collaboration and less dictatorship with his movies. Now when I see the words WRITTEN, PRODUCED & DIRECTED BY M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN at the beginning of a movie, I’m going to groan. And the really sucky thing about this movie is that it had potential to be a really cool horror movie. But it just turned into dumb.

From the wind blowing in the wrong direction of the jet stream to the old lady in the small town, to the wind blowing and more wind blowing to signify some type of Jason Voorhees character is on the hunt of packs of people (Which begs the question how many is too many? And I didn’t know nature could count?) this movie is so ludicrous that it’s not even worth talking about anymore.

Okay one more thing. In the extras section of the DVD, there’s an anatomy of a scene production where, it appears M. Night spent about three-to-four days shooting this one scene where a jeep rams into a tree and bodies are thrown from the vehicle. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cool scene. But, as I was watching this production I was thinking to myself that M. Night should have focused more time tinkering with his terrible script than trying to film a cool scene for the masses.

In a nutshell, that’s what bothers me about this film and his last film LADY IN THE WATER…plenty of tree bark, but no bite.

GRADE: F-

Eimer's Best Netflix Reviews - The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing

Great documentary about the less sexy, but most important part of the the movie-making process - editing.

With comprehensive interviews of the some of the best editors working today, not to mention Academy Award winning directors, the movie rolls along at a fine pace.

If you're into film as an art form, you'll love the stories from Speilberg talking about the editing of JAWS and SCHINDLER'S LIST, and Scorcese talking about his long-time editor, Academy-award winner Thelma Schoonmaker.

As if that weren't all, you get to see Academy-Award winning editor, Walter Murch, ply his trade as he edits a scene from Anthony Minghella's COLD MOUNTAIN.

What a cool, interesting, fun documentary.

GRADE: A

50 Movies. 50 Horrors. 50 Murderers

So, this is what I was talking about a couple weeks ago:

Guess all the movies...WIN my respect.

Stumped? Check out the Cheat Sheet below.

(click image to enlarge)

I know. I know. I missed: The Terminator, Basket Case, Gremlins, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Little Shop of Horrors, Medusa, Jeepers Creepers, Re-Animator, Pumpkinhead, The Hills Have Eyes, Puppet Master and The Phantom of the Opera.

Any others?

However, as space dictates, I can only draw five more (to officially be poster size). Give me your best five in the comments and I'll draw them, toss them in the poster. Then start selling officially signed prints.

Oh, and by the way, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

CHEAT SHEET

TOP ROW

Carrie - Friday the 13th - Mummy - Dracula - Misery - Troll - Alien - The Blob - A Clockwork Orange - I Know What You Did Last Summer

SECOND ROW FROM TOP

Frankenstein - Silence of the Lambs - Hellraiser - The Wolfman - Bride of Frankenstein - The Invisible Man - Jack Frost - Saw - The Thing - Cujo

MIDDLE ROW

Creature from the Black Lagoon - Poltergeist - 2001 A Space Odyssey - Halloween - Night of the Living Dead - Child's Play - The Exorcist - American Psycho - Predator - Tremors

FOURTH ROW FROM TOP

Killer Klowns from Outer Space - Pan's Labyrinth - Candyman - Critters - Sleepy Hollow - It -Scream - A Nightmare on Elm Street - Jaws - Changeling

BOTTOM ROW

The Shining - The Omen - Psycho - The Ring - Leprechaun - Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Fly - Phantasm - The Descent - Village of the Damned

Eimer's Best Netflix Reviews - Mr. Brooks

Judging from everyone I talked to concerning this film, I thought Mr. Brooks was going to be fucking awesome.

However, about halfway in, I found myself experiencing the reverse. I was a bit bored and annoyed with the five different plot points in the film:

• Kevin Costner being a serial killer
• Demi Moore divorcing her ex-husband
• Dane Cook wanting to be a serial killer
• Costner's daughter
• And let's not forget the escape of another serial killer from prison.

A book would have been a better way to go with this than a movie. There's just too much content to weave a plausible storyline.

One idea would be to just focus on Mr. Brooks and his daughter, have William Hurt and police officer Demi Moore come in halfway through and set the movie in the daughter's college town. Without giving too much away, that alone would make a suspenseful two hour flick.

Although the movie looked pretty in terms of production, cinematography and direction, I wasn't fooled. Duo directors Evans and Gideon were looking to make a serial killeresque LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS, or even a PULP FICTION mass murderer flick.

But, instead these two chickens laid a big, fat, brown turd.

GRADE: F

Eimer's Best Netflix Reviews - The Illustrated Man

I was very disappointed in this movie.

After reading Ray Bradbury's book of the same name, I was expecting so much more from this flick, which highlighted three of the better short stories from the book.

Director Jack Smight completely bastardizes and rewrites two of the vignettes (The Last Day of the World and The Long Rain) and fails to capture the essence of the other (The Veldt).

'Hey man quit comparing the book to the movie,' you might scream. Well, the movie does not stand on its own either. Overacted, over-directed, under-produced, and extremely under budget, there's too much focus on the story of Illustrated Man and not enough on the fascinating stories from Bradbury.

The whole idea of the Illustrated Man was to serve a unique way to deliver his collection of short stories (a' la the Crypt Keeper from TALES FROM THE CRYPT). That's it. Speaking of the stories, they could have been a lot better had they followed the same plot structure as the novel. I will give props to the director for innovatively casting Steiger and Bloom in all three chapters. That's about it. Don't waste your time on this one. Pick up the book instead.

Grade: D-