I’ve had a very busy October. I did manage to catch a few movies, but haven’t had time to write anything about them. So here’s three brief movie reviews.

The Departed. Saw this opening night. What can I say except I loved this movie. And I don’t even care for Damon or DiCaprio that much. I accept that they are good actors, I just don’t always like them. But in this movie, along with Nicholson, they were great. If you like mob or crime movies, this movie is awesome. Great story, kept you guessing just a bit. Lots of plot twists. In my opinion, the Best Movie of the Year so far. Should kick ass and take names in the Oscars. Only thing that might hamper it is there were so many good actors, chances are there are going to be multiple nominees from this movie in either the Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor categories and they’ll steal votes from each other. Go see this movie. It is what movies are supposed to be.

The Grudge 2. Saw this on opening night as well. Sent shivers down my spine a few times. Still, not really sure what happens in the movie or why the Grudge is now spanning continents, but it accomplished its goal of being a scary movie. Nothing to write home about though.

The Marine. This brought back memories of “Old” Schwarzenegger movies. By this I mean, big muscled guy gets pissed off and starts beating everyone up. It accomplished this goal well. Weak story, weak acting, but fun to watch once. Probably never watch it again though. Watching the guy be a security guard was rather funny.

Some movies I’ll be seeing soon…
The Prestige
Saw III [this one is a guilty pleasure]
Flags of Our Fathers
Babel

Some movies I might catch…
The Guardian
Maria Antoinette
Bugs in 3-D

I caught this movie as I was killing some time. I had seen some reviews of this movie earlier in the day and some seemed to thing that this movie was going to be a serious look into the lives of people that work in superstores. I didn’t expect anything like that. I expected a fairly bad movie that I hoped would be funny. Nothing more, nothing less.

The premise of the movie is that the store has someone that has one the Employee of the Month award for the past 17 months. If he made it to 18 months, it would be a new record. The only people in the store that like this employee are the management, the customers, and his sidekick name Jorge (who is a lot like the character Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite.) The store also has a slacker who basically doesn’t want management to know he exists, because if they did, they might fire him.

Well the store than receives a new transfer played by Jessica Simpson and the employee of the month and the slacker compete for her attention. The people that expect something should have been clued of by Jessica being in this movie.

The movie is pretty horrible (bad acting, weak plot, etc), but I laughed the whole way through it. Probably not going to watch it again.

It did make me wonder if things like this (reward stickers, secret hiding places amongst the pallets, and checkout speed competitions) really do take place in stores? Never having worked in a “superstore” I’ll never know.

Wait for this movie to make its way on to TV in a few months.

Caught School for Scounrels last weekend at the theatre. This movie stars John Heder in his first major role since Napoleon Dynamite and Billy Bob Thorton.

It wasn’t anything to write home about, but I left the theatre entertained. Pretty simplistic movie about a 20-something named Roger (Heder) that is participating in the Big Brother program and the little kids who want a big brother don’t want him.

That’s where Dr. P (Thorton) comes in. He teaches guys like this to be the lion.Well, Roger takes the what Dr. P teaches very well and the teacher decides to do something about it.

Probably not worth going to the theatre and spending nearly $10 a ticket, but worth a rental.

Yes, there was a new kung fu movie out this past weekend and I went to it. I’ve become a sucker for kung fu movies, mainly because they are almost always entertaining. They may not be great movies, but they entertain.

This one was no different. Fearless, staring Jet Li, in what he calls his last kung fu movie, is a good movie. The kung fu sequences are phenomenal and there is a captivating story (something lacking in a lot of movies) that links the action sequences.

Regardless of whether you like kung fu movies or not, this movie is worth watching, whether you catch it in a theatre or later at home, watch it.

It tells the story of the Chinese Martial Art Master Huo Yuanjia who becomes a symbol to the entire nation, and one worthy of being a model for how everyone should live their lives.

I want go into details of the story other than to say it worth watching. If this is indeed Jet Li’s last movie, he definitely ended on a high note.

I think it is official. There have been too many sports movies lately. We had the Invincible a couple weeks ago that tried to replicate Rudy and failed (it was an OK movie though). Now we have Gridiron Gang staring The Rock.

I was kind of indifferent to this movie. It was good. But not great. Fun to watch once, but I don’t see myself wanting to go watch it again. Football sequences were good. The kids cast to play the various characters did a good jump. The Rock does a decent job, but dramas are not going to be his bread and butter.

Caught this movie this weekend. Didn’t know much about it other than it was a kung fu type movie and Quentin Tarantino had something to do with it (I saw his name in the commercial, think he help produce it or get it released in the US).

Like I said, I didn’t know much about it. The plot can be summed up as there are people raised to protect elephants for the king. One of these elephants is stolen. The guy charged with protecting it goes to retrieve it. Lots of action ensues.

Like Kung Fu Hustle (IMDB), I loved this movie. (Hustle was better, but this was just as much fun to watch, just not as intentionally funny.) Tony Jaa, who plays Kham the lead character (The Protector) likes to break bones, and he breaks a lot of them. He doesn’t seem to kill a lot of people, but he does leave them with lots of injuries. Many of them permanently debilitating. By the end of the movie, I couldn’t help but to laugh each time he broke a bone. He didn’t just break a bone on each person, it was typical two or three bones, and sometimes more. Crack, Crack, Crack! I couldn’t stop laughing.

If you like kung fu movies, you’ll love this. Enough plot to have a story and lot and lots of action.

And for those of you that are fans of Kung Fu Hustle, there is a sequel coming out.

This movie came out before the fall season technically started, but not by much. For those that don’t know it is about a football player that pretty much walked on to the Eagles. They held open tryouts and he made it onto the team.

This movie amounts to a football player that more or less has one really big play early in his career. It was notable that he made the team since he didn’t play in college football. Kinda like Rudy, except for the NFL instead of College Football. Rudy was a better movie though.

This movie is alright though. It was entertaining, Mark Wahlberg plays the part well of Vince Papale, Greg Kinnear also did pretty good playing Dick Vermeil. Finally, Elizabeth Banks plays the hot girl friend to be as well. I knew she looked familiar and she had a recurring guest role on Scrubs.

My thought on the movie is although they pulled it off with Rudy, it is just hard to make a movie about a football player that only has one big play, and they didn’t quite pull it off this time. Although he impresses the coaches during tryouts, it sounds like he ends up making the team because off his love for the team. He grew up a fan of the team and bled Eagle green. The movie is predictable, but it was entertaining.

Let’s just start this off saying the Fall movie season has officially begun. In case you didn’t know, the Fall movie season is when they dump all the movies that they didn’t think would cut in the late spring/summer against better movies. They also release a lot of horror movies in the fall.

Crank isn’t a horror movie. And, yes, it is one of the others that I just mentioned. Crank is a very stylized movie that I wish they had put more thought into making an entertaining story as they thought about the style. It isn’t out and out a bad movie. It just isn’t very good. Luckily, it isn’t that long.

Some entertaining action sequences, ridiculous chase sequences, and an abrupt ending. Admittedly, I dozed off briefly towards the end, I think I only missed a couple of minutes, but I was just a little confused about how we got there. Not sure if it was just poor story or I did doze off.

Jason Statham played the main character, Chelios, about as well as one could do with the part. Amy Smart is also in the movie and that never hurts. She plays a blonde. That about sums up her character.

The popcorn was good.

Walking into this movie, I wasn’t quite sure I was in the right theatre. I expected to see a theatre of late teens and twenty something’s, but there was a variety of people in there, older, younger, clean cut and otherwise.

This is another movie where my expectations were low going on. Surprisingly, there was a lot more story to the movie than I ever expected to see. Although, going for the low brow, cheesy not quite a horror flick with some action, they managed to hit the nail on the head. Even had a spot that made me jump.

There are way too many cheesy CGI snakes and snakes biting people in lots of strategic places that make you both grown and laugh. There is even a cute little dog to watch.

Without Mr. Jackson staring in the movie, it probably wouldn’t have been as entertaining. I kept waiting for him to bust out into his speech from Pulp Fiction (“If any of you mother fuckin’ [snakes] move, I’ll execute every mother fucking last one of ya!”) Either that, or see him whip out his light saber from his Mace Windu character and start slicing and dicing the snakes.

If you like the cheesy type of movie that this aims to be, you won’t be disappointed. If you aren’t in to the movies, you might as well wait for the DVD.

Welcome to the South Harmon Insitute of Technology. Well, what can I say about this movie. First off, I’ll let everyone know my expectations were not high for this movie. I was just hoping for a simple, funny comedy. And that is what I got. Nothing special, but I was entertained for 90 minutes. I could tell while watching it that they filmed with the intention of releasing an unrated version when it comes out on DVD. It follows in the footsteps of American Pie and Revenge of the Nerds and all of the other knock offs, but in the end, it is entertaining. Well worth a watch when it comes out on video.

And for the Revenge of the Nerds fans, there is a remake due out in 2007.