Category → Movies
Review: Inception
![Inception [Photo - Warner Bros.]](http://www.woogmoog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Inception-movie-poster-5-702x1024.jpg "Inception [Photo - Warner Bros.]")
Inception is something special. It is the artistic culmination of everything Christopher Nolan has done, from Memento to The Prestige, from Following to The Dark Knight – every trick, every technique, every idea a snowflake in an avalanche colliding into one incredible opus.
It is a movie whose hype is entirely justified, a wholly engrossing and amazing piece of popular commercial entertainment.
This is what expensive, high-tech Hollywood art can and should be. READ MORE!
Review: Predators
![Predators [Photo - Twentieth Century Fox]](http://www.woogmoog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/predators_xlg-692x1024.jpg "Predators [Photo - Twentieth Century Fox]")
It’s been a rough couple of years for everyone’s favorite cloaky-snarly-stabby yakbak-utilizing alien hunter. The one-two punch of the overall horrendous Alien vs. Predator movies (AvP is watchable but terrible, and AvP: Requiem is like some sort of hate crime) while his xenomorph counterparts live it up in star-studded sequel after sequel (yes, I am kidding – no rational person feels anything positive for Alien: Resurrection).
Can Robert Rodriguez and relative newcomer Nimród Antal turn all of that around? READ MORE!
Review: Restrepo
![Restrepo [Photo - National Geographic/Outpost Films]](http://www.woogmoog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/restrepo.jpg "Restrepo [Photo - National Geographic/Outpost Films]")
There’s no explicit agenda in this documentary, no side rooted for. There are no experts from one side of the ideological fence lobbing grenades at the other, no professors or economists or politicians. There’s only the soldiers. Frightened, angry, depressed, they form the core of Restrepo, a war documentary unlike any other. READ MORE!
Fan-Made Expendables Trailer Wants You to Grow a Pair
Most of the time fan-made trailers and posters are utterly worthless. As much as I love the music used in Inception‘s trailers, it’s quickly replacing The Two Towers‘ rendition of Requiem for a Dream‘s main theme as the most annoyingly overused bit of music on the internet. BRRRRRMMMMM and Predator do not mix.
However, this call-to-arms trailer for The Expendables not only blows most other fan-made hokum out of the water, it also puts the film’s own shoddy marketing to shame. Good-bye CG crows and footage-less teasers, hello “get your ass to Mars” admonishing!
Turn yourself into a goddamned sexual Tyrannosaurus when The Expendables hits theaters August 13th.
UPDATE: So apparently the MPAA really does not like it when you use their green bumper things. The trailer has been re-upped here.
Inception Clip: This Is Your First Lesson
Well, my IMAX ticket is sold. Can it be July 16th now, please?
Review: The Last Airbender
![M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender [Photo - Paramount]](http://www.woogmoog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/wallpap.jpg "M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender [Photo - Paramount]")
The experience of watching The Happening unfold on the silver screen to an unsuspecting audience is something that can never be replicated. The trailers hinted at something frightening, some new twist M. Night Shyamalan would pull on us. Watching that unfold and collapse under so much unintentional hilarity and wooden acting so unimaginably bad is something I never expected would happen again.
Enter The Last Airbender. READ MORE!
Review: Jonah Hex
![Jonah Hex [Photo - Warner Bros.]](http://www.woogmoog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/jonah_hex.jpg "Jonah Hex [Photo - Warner Bros.]")
Just about the only thing Jonah Hex has going for it is its running time: discounting the credits sequence, the movie’s really only about 75 minutes long. Please don’t take this as a recommendation. Standing outside in the sun’s harsh ultraviolet rays for the same amount of time is much more entertaining, and you save a few bucks to boot. Nothing in Jonah Hex works, from the characters to the action to the writing and the special effects: it’s all a boring, stilted mess. READ MORE!
Playing the Numbers Game
![M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender [Photo - Paramount]](http://www.woogmoog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/airbender2.jpg "M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender [Photo - Paramount]")
Everyone seems to be buzzing about The Last Airbender’s Rotten Tomatoes score of 7%, asking things like “is it really that bad,” “is it actually worse than Marmaduke or Twilight: Eclipse,” or “is it really that bad?” It really is interesting to see how much discussion there is out there about scores and numbers and percentages alone on this movie compared to what discussion there is out there on what exactly made the movie so shitty. The Happening is quite possibly one of the worst acts of cinema ever perpetrated on the world, but knowing its Tomatometer score is 18% does nothing to clarify that. READ MORE!
Review: Splice
![Vincenzo Natali's Splice [Photo - Warner Bros.]](http://www.woogmoog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Splice_wall04_1024x768.jpg "Vincenzo Natali's Splice [Photo - Warner Bros.]")
What we pass on to the next generation is not only what we find encoded in our genes. We pass on our memories, legends and aspirations. But we cannot forget that we also pass on our failures, our fears, and the darker sides of humanity. At least, this is what I gathered from the ending of Metal Gear Solid 2, the only Metal Gear game I’ve played. I stopped paying close attention to the plot after I got in a swordfight with the President of the United States who is dressed in a biomechanical tentacle suit in front of a statue of George Washington.
Vincenzo Natali, the mind behind the brilliant and underappreciated Cube, plays with the same themes in Splice. It dabbles in ideas like nature versus nurture and the question of what we do as parents to our offspring and our families. Splice takes these ideas, tosses them into a centrifuge, and fucks the result on the cold barn floor.
Oh by the way, there will be spoilers in this review. Sexy spoilers. READ MORE!
Review: The A-Team
![The A-Team [Photo - 20th Century Fox]](http://www.woogmoog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/ateam_wallpaper3_1024X7681.jpg "The A-Team [Photo - 20th Century Fox]")
The A-Team looked like crap. It looked like the worst kind of excessive, remake-happy Hollywood tripe. The trailer, in all of its CG-idiocy, coasted on nostalgia-bombing the audience with Mr. T references and playing the original theme song.
So it came as an enormous surprise when I walked out of the theater completely stoked. The movie is an incredibly satisfying blast. The trailers made this seem much more serious than any summer movie ought to be, which is a shame because the movie’s playful tone is pretty great. Much of this is due to director/writer Joe Carnahan’s electrifying script and sharp pacing; just as much praise needs to be heaped upon the delightful work done by the entire cast. There’s not a flat note in the entire enterprise. READ MORE!